Modern witch hunting in Nigeria

[wautd]

Christian fundies do the darnest things

Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt

Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities

The rainy season is over and the Niger Delta is lush and humid. This southern edge of West Africa, where Nigeria's wealth pumps out of oil and gas fields to bypass millions of its poorest people, is a restless place. In the small delta state of Akwa Ibom, the tension and the poverty has delivered an opportunity for a new and terrible phenomenon that is leading to the abuse and the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. And it is being done in the name of Christianity.
Almost everyone goes to church here. Driving through the town of Esit Eket, the rust-streaked signs, tarpaulins hung between trees and posters on boulders, advertise a church for every third or fourth house along the road. Such names as New Testament Assembly, Church of God Mission, Mount Zion Gospel, Glory of God, Brotherhood of the Cross, Redeemed, Apostalistic. Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a living by 'deliverances' - exorcisms - for people beset by witchcraft, something seen to cause anything from divorce, disease, accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a competitive market, but by local standards a lucrative one.

But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children - naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush.

Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance - sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street.

This is not just a few cases. This is becoming commonplace. In Esit Eket, up a nameless, puddled-and-potholed path is a concrete shack stuffed to its fetid rafters with roughly made bunk beds. Here, three to a bed like battery chickens, sleep victims of the besuited Christian pastors and their hours-long, late-night services. Ostracised and abandoned, these are the children a whole community believes fervently are witches.

Sam Ikpe-Itauma is one of the few people in this area who does not believe what the evangelical 'prophets' are preaching. He opened his house to a few homeless waifs he came across, and now he tries his best to look after 131.

'The neighbours were not happy with me and tell me "you are supporting witches". This project was an accident, I saw children being abandoned and it was very worrying. I started with three children, then every day it increased up to 15, so we had to open this new place,' he says. 'For every maybe five children we see on the streets, we believe one has been killed, although it could be more as neighbours turn a blind eye when a witch child disappears.

'It is good we have this shelter, but it is under constant attack.' As he speaks two villagers walk past, at the end of the yard, pulling scarfs across their eyes to hide the 'witches' from their sight.

Ikpe-Itauma's wife, Elizabeth, acts as nurse to the injured children and they have called this place the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network, a big name for a small refuge. It has found support from a charity running a school in the area, Stepping Stones Nigeria, which is trying to help with money to feed the children, but the numbers turning up here are a huge challenge.

Mary Sudnad, 10, grimaces as her hair is pulled into corn rows by Agnes, 11, but the scalp just above her forehead is bald and blistered. Mary tells her story fast, in staccato, staring fixedly at the ground.

'My youngest brother died. The pastor told my mother it was because I was a witch. Three men came to my house. I didn't know these men. My mother left the house. Left these men. They beat me.' She pushes her fists under her chin to show how her father lay, stretched out on his stomach on the floor of their hut, watching. After the beating there was a trip to the church for 'a deliverance'.

A day later there was a walk in the bush with her mother. They picked poisonous 'asiri' berries that were made into a draught and forced down Mary's throat. If that didn't kill her, her mother warned her, then it would be a barbed-wire hanging. Finally her mother threw boiling water and caustic soda over her head and body, and her father dumped his screaming daughter in a field. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she stayed near the house for a long time before finally slinking off into the bush.Mary was seven. She says she still doesn't feel safe. She says: 'My mother doesn't love me.' And, finally, a tear streaks down her beautiful face.

Gerry was picked out by a 'prophetess' at a prayer night and named as a witch. His mother cursed him, his father siphoned petrol from his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old face. Gerry's facial blistering is as visible as the trauma in his dull eyes. He asks every adult he sees if they will take him home to his parents: 'It's not them, it's the prophetess, I am scared of her.'

Nwaeka is about 16. She sits by herself in the mud, her eyes rolling, scratching at her stick-thin arms. The other children are surprisingly patient with her. The wound on her head where a nail was driven in looks to be healing well. Nine- year-old Etido had nails, too, five of them across the crown of his downy head. Its hard to tell what damage has been done. Udo, now 12, was beaten and abandoned by his mother. He nearly lost his arm after villagers, finding him foraging for food by the roadside, saw him as a witch and hacked at him with machetes.

Magrose is seven. Her mother dug a pit in the wood and tried to bury her alive. Michael was found by a farmer clearing a ditch, starving and unable to stand on legs that had been flogged raw.

Ekemini Abia has the look of someone in a deep state of shock. Both ankles are circled with gruesome wounds and she moves at a painful hobble. Named as a witch, her father and elders from the church tied her to a tree, the rope cutting her to the bone, and left the 13-year-old there alone for more than a week.

There are sibling groups such as Prince, four, and Rita, nine. Rita told her mum she had dreamt of a lovely party where there was lots to eat and to drink. The belief is that a witch flies away to the coven at night while the body sleeps, so Rita's sweet dream was proof enough: she was a witch and because she had shared food with her sibling - the way witchcraft is spread - both were abandoned. Victoria, cheeky and funny, aged four, and her seven-year-old sister Helen, a serene little girl. Left by their parents in the shell of an old shack, the girls didn't dare move from where they had been abandoned and ate leaves and grass.

The youngest here is a baby. The older girls take it in turn to sling her on their skinny hips and Ikpe-Itauma has named her Amelia, after his grandmother. He estimates around 5,000 children have been abandoned in this area since 1998 and says many bodies have turned up in the rivers or in the forest. Many more are never found. 'The more children the pastor declares witches, the more famous he gets and the more money he can make,' he says. 'The parents are asked for so much money that they will pay in instalments or perhaps sell their property. This is not what churches should be doing.'

Although old tribal beliefs in witch doctors are not so deeply buried in people's memories, and although there had been indigenous Christians in Nigeria since the 19th century, it is American and Scottish Pentecostal and evangelical missionaries of the past 50 years who have shaped these fanatical beliefs. Evil spirits, satanic possessions and miracles can be found aplenty in the Bible, references to killing witches turn up in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Galatians, and literal interpretation of scriptures is a popular crowd-pleaser.

Pastor Joe Ita is the preacher at Liberty Gospel Church in nearby Eket. 'We base our faith on the Bible, we are led by the holy spirit and we have a programme of exposing false religion and sorcery.' Soft of voice and in his smart suit and tie, his church is being painted and he apologises for having to sit outside near his shiny new Audi to talk. There are nearly 60 branches of Liberty Gospel across the Niger Delta. It was started by a local woman, mother-of-two Helen Ukpabio, whose luxurious house and expensive white Humvee are much admired in the city of Calabar where she now lives. Many people in this area credit the popular evangelical DVDs she produces and stars in with helping to spread the child witch belief.

Ita denies charging for exorcisms but acknowledges his congregation is poor and has to work hard to scrape up the donations the church expects. 'To give more than you can afford is blessed. We are the only ones who really know the secrets of witches. Parents don't come here with the intention of abandoning their children, but when a child is a witch then you have to say "what is that there? Not your child." The parents come to us when they see manifestations. But the secret is that, even if you abandon your child, the curse is still upon you, even if you kill your child the curse stays. So you have to come here to be delivered afterwards as well,' he explains patiently.

'We know how they operate. A witch will put a spell on its mother's bra and the mother will get breast cancer. But we cannot attribute all things to witches, they work on inclinations too, so they don't create HIV, but if you are promiscuous then the witch will give you HIV.'

As the light fades, he presents a pile of Ukpabio's DVDs. Mistakenly thinking they are a gift, I am firmly put right.

Later that night, in another part of town, the hands of the clock edge towards midnight. The humidity of the day is sealed into the windowless church and drums pound along with the screeching of the sweat-drenched preacher. 'No witches, oh Lord,' he screams into the microphone. 'As this hour approaches, save us, oh Lord!'

His congregation is dancing, palms aloft, women writhe and yell in tongues. A group moves forward shepherding five children, one a baby, and kneel on the concrete floor and the pastor comes among them, pressing his hands down on each child's head in turn, as they try to hide in the skirts of the woman. This is deliverance night at the Church of the True Redeemer, and while the service will carry on for some hours, the main event - for which the parents will have paid cash - is over.

Walking out into the night, the drums and singing from other churches ring out as such scenes are being repeated across the village.

It is hard to find people to speak out against the brutality. Chief Victor Ikot is one. He not only speaks out against the 'tinpot' churches, but has also done the unthinkable and taken in a witch to his own home. The chief's niece, Mbet, was declared a witch when she was eight. Her mother, Ekaete, made her drink olive oil, then poison berries, then invited local men to beat her with sticks. The pastor padlocked her to a tree but unlocked her when her mother could not find the money for a deliverance. Mbet fled. Mbet, now 11, says she has not seen the woman since, adding: 'My mother is a wicked mother.'

The Observer tracked down Mbet's mother to her roadside clothing stall where she nervously fiddled with her mobile phone and told us how her daughter had given her what sounded very much like all the symptoms of malaria. 'I had internal heat,' she says, indicating her stomach. 'It was my daughter who had caused this, she drew all the water from my body. I could do nothing. She was stubborn, very stubborn.' And if her daughter had died in the bush? She shrugged: 'That is God's will. It is in God's hands.'

Chief Victor has no time for his sister-in-law. 'Nowadays when a child becomes stubborn, then everyone calls them witches. But it is usually from the age of 10 down, I have never seen anyone try to throw a macho adult into the street. This child becomes a nuisance, so they give a dog a bad name and they can hang it.

'It is alarming because no household is untouched. But it is the greed of the pastors, driving around in Mercedes, that makes them choose the vulnerable.'

In a nearby village The Observer came across five-year-old twins, Itohowo and Kufre. They are still hanging around close to their mother's shack, but are obviously malnourished and in filthy rags. Approaching the boys brings a crowd of villagers who stand around and shout: 'Take them away from us, they are witches.' 'Take them away before they kill us all.' 'Witches'.

The woman who gave birth to these sorry scraps of humanity stands slightly apart from the crowd, arms crossed. Iambong Etim Otoyo has no intention of taking any responsibility for her sons. 'They are witches,' she says firmly and walks away.

And by nightfall there are 133 children in the chicken coop concrete house at Esit Eket.

[Broomstick]

Scapegoating, greed, excuses to abandon children that parents in dire poverty can't support, perhaps a form of human sacrifice... Africa is SUCH a shithole.

[Sidewinder]

What the pastors are doing is despicable, and the parents are damned for allowing the pastors to continue doing that.

[Buddha]

I don't understand this kind of thing. This is being done to innocent children who have no idea what they mean by "witchcraft" and are too young to have any involvement. The whole thing with the exorcisms and the killings/attempted killings is terrible and yet, it makes some sense. People want to have somthing to attack as this allows them to create a besieged mentality in others. That way when everyone sees what happens to the "witches" they will be extra carefull to avoid doing anything that might seem to be witchcraft. It's all about social conformity and control that a religion has over a people. The belief in witches, demons, and other supernatural beings exists in the world and there are a great deal of superstitions out there. For example, there is the Ghost Festival in Buddhist countries where they set out food and hold ceremonies for the dead. This is not like this example in the article where people are being killed because some woman said they were witches. That's the second thing, how can the church people justify using mediums and the like if they don't like witchcraft? How do they know that they are credible and believeable? Then you have the problem of why do they charge money for a worthless ritual that isn't even needed in the first place? It seems that like the old saying goes "Greed is good, greed works...". Sick and wrong is what it is.

[LadyTevar]

Tha tpastors drive Audis and Humvees. The children are beaten, starved, rejected or killed.

There is nothing of God in that. It makes me ill that they call themselves Christians.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Tha tpastors drive Audis and Humvees. The children are beaten, starved, rejected or killed.

There is nothing of God in that. It makes me ill that they call themselves Christians.

It would be funny if it weren't disgustingly tragic. I'd like to do something, but I have no clue what could help these people aside from garrisoning the villages and convincing them that children aren't witches.

[Adrian Laguna]

I honestly reacted to this by going, "Oh, that's new." This type of shit is just too common for it to make any impact.

Africa is SUCH a shithole.

They're still eating people down there, it's a major component of many magic spells.

[Darth Servo]

Unbelievable.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Apparently, the Spanish Inquisition has arrived in Africa. Though somehow I am not totally surprised by it given the great variety of nonsense.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I think that everyone who wants to become a Christian just because the church down the street does some sanctimonious homeless supper on holidays should have to go to every country in the world where Christianity does not have any secular force in place capable of keeping them from doing shit like this, and see what they still feel about it at the end of it.

[Darth Wong]

Tha tpastors drive Audis and Humvees. The children are beaten, starved, rejected or killed.

There is nothing of God in that. It makes me ill that they call themselves Christians.

Oh come on, I've read the Bible. That is 100% pure God. Or didn't you read the part about how a group of kids who made fun of a prophet were immediately torn apart by bears, who were sent by God's love?

Want to know what God is? Eric Cartman with real power. RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!!!!!

[Napoleon the Clown]

This angers me. Greatly. There's no truly just way to deal with the evil motherfuckers that are profiting off of the uneducated masses in Africa. A horrible death? While that would be satisfying to the more brutal aspect of me, it's no better than the people pulling this shit, ultimately. And, honestly, it's too easy on the fuckers. To be entirely honest, there's a part of me that wishes horrible ill upon these... creatures. The rational part of me knows better, but the vindictive part? It wants retribution.

The most disgusting part? These soulless monsters are doing everything they can to keep the villagers from getting a proper education. They're taking away every bit of money that they can. Evil, greedy, amoral monsters. They could afford to actually help the villagers, but they don't. This fucking pisses me off. The next time someone starts going off on how bloody fantastic religion is is going to get pointed to this in addition to all the other atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion (not the least of which is the burnings of the Great Library).

And people wonder why I have no faith in humanity.

[Darth Wong]

It would be funny if it weren't disgustingly tragic. I'd like to do something, but I have no clue what could help these people aside from garrisoning the villages and convincing them that children aren't witches.

As long as they believe witches exist at all, somebody will suffer sooner or later.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

Between the disastrous land reforms, occasional genocide, tribal conflicts between machete wielding loons in some truly ass end of Africa ( which then turns into genocide), conflict for natural resources, AIDS, and now this shit, it's a wonder that the entire continent isn't literally soaked in blood.

We should just lump all conflicts of that region into one homogonized mess, rather than compartmentalizing each country's problems, and just call it Africa War I.

[Lusankya]

Tha tpastors drive Audis and Humvees. The children are beaten, starved, rejected or killed.

There is nothing of God in that. It makes me ill that they call themselves Christians.

Oh come on, I've read the Bible. That is 100% pure God. Or didn't you read the part about how a group of kids who made fun of a prophet were immediately torn apart by bears, who were sent by God's love?

Want to know what God is? Eric Cartman with real power. RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!!!!!

A better proof of this being "Godly" would be Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

If these people actually do believe that these children are witches, then they are perfectly justified in killing them, according to God.

[Jericho Kross]

Now this is a new low. It saddens me that not much is being done about this.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Now this is a new low.

Haven't you been reading? This isn't a new low at all. Shit like this happens all the time and is considered 'un-newsworthy'. In the 'good ol' days' it happened a hell of a lot more.

If the argument that religion itself isn't harmful, it's just people who pervert it, is true, then this is a good argument that people deserve mass extinction. If their general nature leads to this sort of suffering, everyone dying off relatively quickly would likely lead to less total harm. I still try to cling to the hope that humanity as a whole isn't so bad, and that these sorts of infectious memes can one day be eliminated from the species' collective consciousness.

[Broomstick]

You can't even blame Christianity for this - this shit started long before Christianity and people who are Muslims and animists are often just as guilty. That line about "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" comes from the Jews.

[Darth Servo]

You can't even blame Christianity for this - this shit started long before Christianity and people who are Muslims and animists are often just as guilty. That line about "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" comes from the Jews.

But it was Judeo-Christianity who canonized the shit; put it in an uneditable textbook.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

You can't even blame Christianity for this - this shit started long before Christianity and people who are Muslims and animists are often just as guilty. That line about "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" comes from the Jews.

But it was Judeo-Christianity who canonized the shit; put it in an uneditable textbook.

The number of different 'versions' of the bible lead me to suspect that it is actually quite editable.

[Shinova]

To quote Blood Diamond:


"THIS. IS. AFRICA."

[Molyneux]

Tha tpastors drive Audis and Humvees. The children are beaten, starved, rejected or killed.

There is nothing of God in that. It makes me ill that they call themselves Christians.

Oh come on, I've read the Bible. That is 100% pure God. Or didn't you read the part about how a group of kids who made fun of a prophet were immediately torn apart by bears, who were sent by God's love?

Want to know what God is? Eric Cartman with real power. RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!!!!!

A better proof of this being "Godly" would be Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

If these people actually do believe that these children are witches, then they are perfectly justified in killing them, according to God.

Mis-fucking-translation.. The term translated to "witch" refers to people who are specifically doing evil things - not just magic or sooth-saying, but actively trying to harm people. It cannot be something done by dint of birth, as apparently these "witches" are.

[wautd]

Oh come on, I've read the Bible. That is 100% pure God. Or didn't you read the part about how a group of kids who made fun of a prophet were immediately torn apart by bears, who were sent by God's love?

Want to know what God is? Eric Cartman with real power. RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!!!!!

A better proof of this being "Godly" would be Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

If these people actually do believe that these children are witches, then they are perfectly justified in killing them, according to God.

Mis-fucking-translation.. The term translated to "witch" refers to people who are specifically doing evil things - not just magic or sooth-saying, but actively trying to harm people. It cannot be something done by dint of birth, as apparently these "witches" are.

Sadly for you that's isn't the only Bible quote speaking about people doing witchcraft or wizardry. Are those mistranslations too?

[Molyneux]

Mis-fucking-translation.. The term translated to "witch" refers to people who are specifically doing evil things - not just magic or sooth-saying, but actively trying to harm people. It cannot be something done by dint of birth, as apparently these "witches" are.

Sadly for you that's isn't the only Bible quote speaking about people doing witchcraft or wizardry. Are those mistranslations too?

The only other mention I can remember is an injunction not to go to seers or oracles for advice.

I don't really want to diverge too far from the thread topic - just wanted to make the point that these schmucks don't even have the Bible to hide behind.

[Shroom Man 777]

It is not safe in Africa. I hate that place.