Nigeria: On the abandonment of Hope, 2, accused of witchcraft

Let Hope be seen

The picture was haunting and it was heartrending, one of a seriously emaciated boy being fed from a water bottle by a heavily tattooed Caucasian lady on a street in Nigeria. [Independent]

The boy who got given the name Hope could hardly be 2 years old and was apparently thrown into the streets by his ‘parents’ because something, someone, somewhere had convinced them that he was a witch.

I am of the opinion that we really have no witches in Nigeria, my idea of a witch is one who commands certain supernatural powers for the spectacular, like something out of the Exorcist.

We create Hope daily

However, what we have in Nigeria is collusion to do evil, the vague dread of the supernatural according to the words of Lord Lugard and a complete ignorance of mental illness. This is compounded by the activities of evil, malicious and outrageously malevolent people who have built a reputation on trading on the fears, anxieties and misfortunes of the public by choosing the easy target of stigmatising children as witches and wizards.

Once the public is mesmerised by the preaching of these false prophets, purveyors of heresies and unspeakable evil, children become the brunt of their frustration leading to heinous physical abuse and the torture of children in the guise of exorcism and consequently the abandonment of children like Hope.

Rescuing Hope

It is a sad reflection on our society in 2015, that it has taken a Danish woman to take this child off the streets and nurse him back to health. Anja Ringgren Loven is before anyone screams White Saviour Complex, the new Mary Slessor in the self-same regional community just over a century ago where twins were put to death for the ignorance of the biology of reproduction.

Anja Ringgren Loven runs the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) which she founded with her husband David and it now homes 34 children rescued from the consequences of religiously-inspired superstition that majors in stigmatisation rather than emancipation of spirit, soul and body.

The abusers of Hope

I have in times past written about the evil ministry of a self-described apostle Helen Ukpabio who thankfully was expunged from the UK before she had the time to spew out her venomously hurtful sermons that castigate the vulnerable to enhance her reputation. It is my view that anyone who uses religion to incite violence against the vulnerable, especially children should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and taken off our streets.

We are so far behind in understanding and protecting the rights of the child, our womenfolk, and the disabled and other minority groups in our society. What we cannot afford in our quest to leave the primitive for the civilised is to allow the likes of this apostle of wrath to thrive in any part of our society.

Many a Hope helped

The picture of Hope and Anja has captured our hearts and hopefully it will capture our minds and our actions, all that have by misfortune and circumstance been given the rotten lot of Hope, find loving, caring, hopeful and encouraging places of succour to become healthy and wealthy members of our greater humanity.

I could not find a website for the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF), it would have offered an opportunity for us to contribute to the work of this amazing Good Samaritan organisation.

Making better Hope stories

However, the biggest challenge we face is the need for us as individuals and as a society to begin to think for ourselves about what kind of society we want to be by addressing the various issues of abuse and ignorance. We need to apply more rational thinking to the use of religion for the betterment of humanity rather than for the ostracism of the vulnerable.

Most importantly, we need to stop condoning evil practices done in the name of religion, culture, tradition or some belief system, if it hurts even the smallest amongst us, we have failed as a people and we need to repent of our tolerance of this and work for meaningful change to give everyone a chance to participate in our humanity rather than be victims of the mobs we join with to mete our Neanderthal violence.

We have a choice to let the children laugh and thrive amongst us and see less of the situation that brought Hope into focus.

Opinion: Save the children from these people - Part III - Helen Ukpabio's removal from the UK

A nasty woman

Nothing could have pleased me more than to hear that the self-styled apostle Helen Ukpabio had been bundled out of the UK with no option for future entry.

Helen Ukpabio is notorious for the absurd pseudo-Christian ministry of stigmatising helpless children as practitioners of witchcraft in Nigeria and then conducting macabre exorcisms that brutalise the so accused in ways too evil to depict.

Blog - On the rise of juvenile witchcraft stigmatisations

Blog - Nigeria: No Country for Vulnerable Children

What is most repugnant about her sorcery is having trained as a nurse, she propounds that if children are distressed at night, crying and running high fevers, the said kids are in the employ of Satan.

A religious quack

That anyone would believe this, let alone act on this criminally contemptible quackery is indicative of the mesmerising hold her atrocious doctrine in the name of religion has over an easily manipulated and vulnerable people who can be cajoled into ascribing every misfortune in their lives to some agency of evil spiritual forces.

In the process, stigmatised children have been abused, violated, brutalised, abandoned, starved and sometimes murdered. It sickens beyond anything tolerable that such barbarity finds adherents, supporters and proselytes.

That is why she was in the UK to promote amongst us unconscionably superstitious and animist-like rituals suggestive of questionable Christian provenance.

Frustrate this evil enterprise

From the moment she landed for her odious campaign, activists got onto her case, and had the venue owners hosting her meetings rescind the arrangement, then agitated to have her removed from the country.

Some children suffer enough in the UK due to all sorts of unfortunate, unforgivable and avoidable issues in parenting, care and the system than to have that compounded by the likes of Helen Ukpabio.

Her breakaway from the cultish Brotherhood of Cross and Star to form a ministry that trades in fearful stigmatisation along with the thugs in her ambit who foment violence on those who oppose her views makes her a danger to any community at home or abroad.

Prosecute this to all lengths

The ideal situation would be to close down her theatre of the absurd along with finding ways to make her responsible for the grievous harm committed against children as a result of her influential and abhorrent teachings.

Failing that, deportations, discomfort, disruptions and anything to arrest the abuse of the helpless and innocent in the name of religion must be done.

Helen Ukpabio must be persona non grata in any civilised setting and especially in Nigeria, her activities must be trammelled and supervised to ensure no other child comes to any harm.

She is evil, there are no better words to describe her.

Yet, it is imperative that we save the children from people like Helen Ukpabio who acts irresponsibly with the power she has to convince people of religious absurdities that gross atrocities are committed against defenceless and innocent children.

On the rise of juvenile witchcraft stigmatisations

A horrible development

It is sad and disheartening to hear that there is a rise in child witchcraft accusations in Africa [1]. I have never been able to watch the harrowing depictions on child witchcraft exorcisms that have appeared in documentaries in the recent years.

Worse still is the violence meted out to these accused children with the aim of cleansing them of their witchcraft powers.

I cannot understand if witchcraft were metaphysical, paranormal or spiritual how physical torture with increasingly bizarre rituals of unbelievable cruelty can be the means of negating the power and influence of witchcraft.

The hold of superstitious gullibility

The fact that certain of these charlatan exorcists can be religious leaders holding sway over frightened, superstitious and gullible congregations is bad enough – these crowds aid and abet childhood cruelty with the thinking that they are doing good.

Anyone who allows reason and common-sense to influence their judgement would very well know that if indeed these children were witches, wizards, sorcerers or more, they could easily have pooled their powers to wreak havoc amongst their tormentors teach them a veritable lesson they will never forget.

Helpless against a baying mob

These helpless, hapless, deprived children who are usually orphans, handicapped, destitute or different, especially albinos who for no reason of theirs have encountered misfortune and should find a more sympathetic, humane and compassionate society are rejected and what better way to reject them than to cast them as practitioners of witchcraft then engage in a public lynching of the children dressed as an exorcism.

Religious leaders themselves, frauds and agents of devilish concepts with their eyes on filthy lucre find a ready audience who are ready to believe any tale about their lot in life being hindered by the activities of their wards. There is money to be made in pointing accusing fingers and almost nothing can be done by the child to fight back against false accusations.

Either way, once accused of witchcraft, you are stigmatised and can never be innocent of it in the eyes of those who are lead to believe such atrocious claims.

Nothing Christian about this

From a Christian perspective, even Jesus said [2], suffer (allow, encourage) little children to come unto me and every child that suffered any affliction was humanely and compassionately healed r delivered; not brutalised as we find done today by apostles and evangelists of malevolent wickedness, gratuitous sadism and criminally actionable grievous bodily harm.

To which Jesus did say, perpetrators of violence against children can expect nothing better than drowning in the sea by hanging a millstone [3] round their necks. The preceding verses [4] talked about the need for childhood innocence, trust and humility, hardly anything about childhood witchcraft a concept that have developed for no justifiable reason than to feed the iniquitous ministries of people pretending to run a legitimate church.

Prosecute the practice mercilessly

This rotten practice has to stop and it can only stop when followers begin to follow good and sound doctrine.

Meanwhile, civil authorities [5] must not be afraid to visit the full force of the law on anybody who abuses children especially those who do it under the guise of witchcraft exorcism or some bizarre religious persuasion; the life of these children is hard enough, to make it a living hell is just unconscionably evil and an abdication of society of its responsibility to help the vulnerable.

Just because we cannot love the children or dare to like them for whatever reason does not give the license to make injurious accusations that offer the opportunity to visit the wickedest imaginations of evil violence on them.

Sources

[1] BBC News - Rise in African children accused of witchcraft

[2] Luke 18:16 | bible.cc

[3] Matthew 18:6 | bible.cc

[4] The Little Children - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Witchcraft: Akpabio Warns Churches

Other references

UN publishes IHEU statement on witchcraft in Africa | International Humanist and Ethical Union

Beliefs - A Nigerian Witch-Hunter Defends Herself - NYTimes.com

Dispatches - Saving Africa's Witch Children - Channel 4