Reuniting “child Witches” With Their Parents

Reuniting “Child Witches” With Their Parents
By Buki Ponle (NAN)



UTIT-Ofon aged seven years, and her 10-month-old sister, Utibe, were pronounced to be “witches’’ by a local church in February 2008.


That was at Uquo, a village in the Esit Eket Local Government Area in Akwa Ibom, described by the natives as a notorious haven for child witches who “fly even in the daytime’’.


Rattled by the pronouncement of the church, the mother, Mayen Sunday-John, decided to end it all with her two daughters.


Mayen’s decision is based on the fact that once a child is “confirmed’’ to be a witch or wizard, he or she is stigmatised and until a church conducts a purification exercise, the child stands condemned in the family, as well as in the community.


Mayen, in her 30s, had just lost her husband, and to heighten her sorrow, her husband’s building was razed by a mysterious fire thereafter. Her mini-mart also went down in calamity.


The string of disasters must certainly be the evil machinations of her own daughters, the church declared.


These signs portrayed her children as witches because when a calamity befalls a family, especially in this way and in this part of the country, then there must be witches among the children.


All Mayen wanted was a confirmation of her mindset, and in no other place than the church whose pastors claimed to have “cleansed’’ child “witches’’ and “wizards’’ of their evil powers for pecuniary reward.


But she could not afford the N15,000 charged by the church to set her children “free’’ and, out of anger and frustration, she sent the daughters to a centre established by an NGO, the Child Rights And Rehabilitation Network (CRARN).


Mayen swore “never to see the children again’’.


However, two weeks after, the mother in her yielded, at least momentarily. So she went for the younger daughter and turned her back on Utit-Ofon, the older girl.


It was not until August 2008 that the centre, situated at Ikot Afaha in Eket, and rumoured among the locals to possess “healing powers’’, reconciled Utit-Ofon with her mother.


“We don’t have spiritual power to exorcise these children who are not witches in the first place. What we do is counselling and taking good care of the children who become unaffected after a while,’’ remarks the President of the network, Sam Ikpe-Itauma.


Yet in a run-down fishing settlement at Ibaka, near Oron, in the same state, lives Julie Isaac Usung-Urua, who abandoned her eight-year-old daughter, Comfort Edet Okon, at the centre for six years because the girl was declared a witch and a social pollutant.


As in other tales of child witchcraft, Julie, 48, lived a life of comfort with her Nigerian husband in Cameroon before separation. She had six children, but only three survived, including Comfort, the last child.


She relocated with her children to Nigeria in 2003 and remarried, but lived with her relations, who later started to accuse her of bringing misfortune to the family members.


“As fishermen, my relations started complaining of shrinking catches the day Comfort was brought home,’’ recounts Julie.


So, the “root cause’’ of the misfortune, of course, was Comfort, who was later beaten to a pulp and made to “confess’’ after a church had declared her a witch.


Comfort became the first child to be rescued and admitted to the rehabilitation centre in 2003, but was reconciled with her mother on Jan. 28, 2009.


Observers wonder why any sane mother, after carrying two pregnancies successfully in a country where maternal and child mortality is one of the highest in the world, tag her children witches and throw them away?


What would make a mother reject her child after she had lost three already?


“I was misled by a church and the community, and I fell into it because I was down and out, and there was nowhere to turn to. I regret my action and I hope my children have forgiven me,’’ says Mayen “ I went back to take the younger one because I started having sleepless nights, and because of the church’s hold on me with its pronouncements on my children I became hardened against my first child.


“The other reason for the abandonment is the community which stigmatised my children, but God could not have been happy with me if I had allowed them to die,’’ recalls the mother amid sobs.
As she lays on her back in the thatched apartment, cuddling her children at Uquo village, Mayen recounts with nostalgia the good old days when her husband was alive.


Now she is a squatter in this building, the dwelling place of her aunt and her husband.


“I need a home and money to start a small business so I can send the children to school. You only think of witches and wizards when you lack money, and that is why the church has capitalised on people’s misfortune,’’ she speaks though an interpreter.


Mayen says since the return of her children, no catastrophe has befallen the family, attesting to the fact that all is well with them spiritually, physically and mentally.


“I now look at some of these churches as a place of deceit, though I still go to the church, not that particular church’’, she says, pointing in its direction. “So government should investigate their activities,’’ she adds.


Her daughter, Utit-Ofon, looking healthy and oblivious of her past, expresses joy at being reconciled with her mother.


“I am longing to go back to school because I was in primary II at the centre,’’ she says.
If Utit-Ofon is happy, perhaps Comfort could be described an embodiment of ecstasy. After being denied parental care for six years out of her 14 years of living, she was back home at last on Jan. 28, 2009 from the centre.


Popularly referred to as the “Mother of the Camp’’, being the first girl to be rescued and brought to the centre, Comfort says:


“Although I miss my colleagues, there is nothing as sweet as home.’’


She was already in Primary 5 in the school run by the centre, and to ensure continuity in her education, the centre has awarded her a scholarship up to the university level.


“I am not a witch, and no matter what has happened to me, I will ensure that I use my past to straighten my future and be an ambassador for child survival and protection,’’ Comfort says. Her mother is equally happy over the reunion, saying that “her (Comfort’s) absence haunted me.


“At a stage, I became convinced that she was not a witch, so I started visiting her at the centre up to 2006, and when I felt she was comfortable enough, I stopped not because I did not want her, but because I had no means to support her if I had removed her from the centre,’’ she says through an interpreter.


Now a grandmother, Julie is appealing to other parents to have a change of heart and reunite with their children still living in the centre in a process that requires government intervention.


The centre has reunited at least 100 of such children with their parents, according to Ikpe-Itauma, the CRARN President.


“It is sad that some churches, instead of being intermediaries, have compounded the child-witch phenomenon by diagnosing without curing.


“Government and Christian associations should step into this,’’ Mayen counsels.


Just as Mayen demands, Julie also wants government to empower indigent parents to check the rampant abandonment of children.


“It is only among poor people that cases of child witch and wizard exist,’’ she says.


Observers note that at last, the state government has waded into the issue, with the arrest and the prosecution of some pastors, the construction of rehabilitation centres and the strengthening of the law to protect children from all forms of abuse and neglect.


A child rights advocate, Mr. Adewole Adeoye, wants the government to identify the children at the rehabilitation centre and return them to their parents as well as fund their education without further delay.


Their parents should be offered jobs and loans to start their lives afresh, while the government should step up its enlightenment campaign against the child witch trend, he suggests. (NAN Features) ** If used, please credit the writer and the Agency.

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