Nigeria: Saving Akwa Ibom Children

[b]In the olden days when the belief in the malevolence of witches was widespread being labeled as a witch or wizard brought instant death as such a person was dealt vicious blows with all manner of missiles, including sticks and cutlasses.

Then, witches were thought to bring ill luck and calamities to their communities, which explain why they were not spared, once labeled as one.

Thankfully this belief has died out over the years. At least, in Nigeria we no longer witness the spectacle of public act of stoning, beatings and eventual deaths common in those days. Education and enlightenment along with the possibility of sanctions if you cause the death of a person have seen to it that people behaved. But has the cruel attitude stopped entirely? No. In Akwa Ibom state the primitive and callous treatment of those dubbed witches and wizards has continued unabated. In many communities, old women who have become destitute, wandering and muttering to themselves and children as young as five are blamed for calamities, beaten up and cast away from such communities for being the harbingers of occurrences that have befallen certain individuals in the society. The practice is so widespread that not a day passes without some hapless child labeled a witch or wizard and subjected to cruel and inhuman treatments and driven out of the village to fend for him or herself.

The result is that such castaway children have swollen the already large number of the destitute in Akwa Ibom state. Children who otherwise should have been in school to get some education are turned into vagabonds and social misfits on account of some unproven allegations by the same society that should ensure they grow up into upright and law abiding citizens. More baffling however is the lukewarm attitude of the Akwa Ibom State government in putting a stop to what is indeed a regression into the dark ages. For an odious and inhumane practice pervading the whole state the government's intervention is limited only to suasion, believing that telling people to stop the practice was enough to halt it. Little wonder that it has not and will not, until a more purposeful effort is made toward that end. What is needed is a law clearly stopping anyone from calling another a witch and laying down stiff penalties, including a term of imprisonment if found guilty.

For a society steeped in superstition however, stiff sanctions should be deployed side by side with sensitization that imputing all deaths and other personal calamities to the handiwork of witches and wizards based upon which children, barely out their pants, are chased away cannot be the right way of handling the situation. They should be told that as human beings they are bound to see calamities and tribulations, rather than attributing them to some toddler with evil powers they should see them as the act of God. Not forgetting also that many instances of deaths may be prevented if the people seek early treatment in hospitals. Akwa Ibom state is by Nigeria standard a rich state. It should therefore use its resources to disabuse the minds of its people from attributing every bad event to the mumbo-jumbo of witches and wizards. Public awareness through intensive campaigns across the state should be able to achieve this.

Meanwhile, adequate succour should be provided for the children already turned into vagrants and destitute by giving them shelter, food and education, as a way of ensuring that they do not become embittered and turn into social misfits, and end up paying back society as armed robbers and cutthroats.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTjpXqUjvO4&feature=related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY30JTYLejw&feature=related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZVVbGEOoCM&feature=related

:-x

,

:-x

These video clips should be sent to UNESCO, UNICEF and UN. Nigeria rulers should be tried in the world court for crime against humanity. Akwa Ibom and Cross River State Govs, past and present should be tried for genocide.

[flash=450,350]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY30JTYLejw[/flash]

Child witch victims of Nigeria Africa

[flash=450,350]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTjpXqUjvO4[/flash]

Child labeling witch bishop arrested

It is called "ideological capture"

poor people on the brink will believe in anything to bring them substances.

poor people are easily led.

Poor people believe that supernatural powers are causing their fate.

IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!!!

MAN is causing their Pain.

MAN is causing their poverty.



yet they are not intelligent enough to see it (its not their fault).