I have just watched the most appalling documentary on how children in the Delta region of Nigeria were branded as child witches. How fundamental so called Christian pentecostal churches set themselves up to accuse children of being possessed with the devil. Then they would offer their parents to do an exorcism for a charge. An extortionate charge. Many children were being branded by adults, many became outcasts of entire communities and there were those who died from the torture put upon them. Somehow in a misguided way, ordinary Christians had mingled their underlying belief in the supernatural together and were being conned by bogus priests to pay up and then starve, burn and kill their own children. It is staggering to consider in today's age there are country's and places who still believe in witchcraft. How their poverty is scapegoated by blaming children. Rationality has no say in such matters.
Within two minutes of watching the Dispatches documentary on Channel 4 on demand I was in tears. I could not help myself and had to make a donate to the charity (Stepping Stones) trying to combat these beliefs. As the program went on, I got to learn it was a follow up episode from an earlier one perhaps a year or more ago. The strength of the program was such it had helped a new law be passed in Nigeria against cruelty to children. It had also had a follow up from with the help of a Nigerian football player who visited the charity's orphanage set up to help these outcast children. Together things are moving in the right direction. However there was a part of the program which highlighted this abuse was far from over.
A woman called Helen Ukpabio had encouraged the stigmatization of children as witches by creating various films. In one the film portrayed possessed children eating human flesh, being possessd of evil and causing a man's eyes to pop out. They looked like two ping pong balls suspended by string from his face. This woman Ukpabio presides over 150 churches the program stated. She even instigated a raid on the orphanage by the police and her lawyer. They were looking for the director so as to deal out their own form of justice. This was obvious when a gun was openly pulled out and some children who tried to stop the four plane clothes police men were assaulted, two were knocked unconscious. Being the head of so many churches it is in Helen Ukpabio's interest to continue to propagate the interest in supernatural and evil events attributable to children. The bottom line is financial. It is a wealthy business Dispatches stated. When interviewed and asked reasonable questions about the abuse of children Helen Ukpabio became defensive, even racist against the white female interviewer who asked these questions of a black woman in Nigeria. One question she asked was simple "where does it say in the bible about children being evil or possessed?" Ukpabio could not answer, although she said there were 100s of places.
If evil does exist in this world, it is in people who pick on the vulnerable, the poor, the ill educated, the weak, the old and the young. If evil does exist and the devil does exist, then one of his servants would be such a woman, without prejudice of course.
