Archbishop Cletus Bassey, former chairman of the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Akwa Ibom has said there is nothing the body can do about the heinous act of branding children as witches which is prevalent in some parts of the country.
The practice, very common in the South-South states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River, has subjected many children to terror with many of severely beaten, stigmatised and outcasted by their relatives who sent them out into the street.
Scooper learnt that witchcraft accusation typically comes from the church with certain pastors ‘prophesying’ that a ‘witch’ child was responsible for a family misfortune – be it ill-health, job loss, or a business downturn.
After such prophesy, parents or families would prefer to banish the child with some going as far as setting their children on fire or beheading them.
“Many of these places are not churches; they are magic houses, they are 419 centres,” Premium Times reported Bassey as saying.
He said, “all kinds of nonsense things” happening in the “magic centres” cannot happen in the church.
“How can you be in a church where they would bring Coke and Fanta and they will say they are doing anointment, then anoint people with Coke and Fanta?
“How do you have a man who says he is a man of God and he would be putting his legs on a woman and would say he is doing deliverance?”
People who run such “centres” are mostly uneducated, lack theological training, and are not members of CAN, Mr Bassey said.
“There’s nothing CAN can do about it, you cannot go to a family in which you are not a member and say ‘sit down here’ or ‘don’t do that again’.
“You don’t have the instruments of taking charge of those things, you are not empowered by the constitution,” he said.
The archbishop who spoke at a roundtable on child development which held in Uyo to mark the 2019 Children’s Day, contend that the witchcraft phenomenon was a nationwide thing, and not peculiar to Akwa Ibom.
