BENUE'S AVERSION TO WITCHCRAFT.(PHOTO).

 BENUE'S AVERSION TO WITCHCRAFT

8th May, 2023     

Benue state is once again in the news for the wrong reasons. Only recently, youths in Ikyve community in Konshisha Local Government Area of the state reportedly buried two elderly persons alive for alleged witchcraft practice.

According to witnesses, the two elders were sent beneath the earth on suspicion of invoking the lightning that killed one of the villagers identified as Henry Ihwakaa, his wife and his two-week-old child. One of the elders was Henry Ihwakaa’s father. The other victim whose name was not given was said to be a collaborator.

Aggrieved youths in the community were said to have mobilised and attacked Ihwakaa’s father and his alleged collaborator. Thereafter, they dug a shallow grave and buried them alive in it.

However, contrary to the reports, the state’s Police Command Public Relations Officer, SP Catherine Anene, only confirmed the killing of one elder, stating that two other suspects were already in police net, pending further investigation.

On January 13, this year, one Pa Justin Kyadoo was seized and set ablaze by some angry members of a community in Gwer East LGA of Benue state, accusing him of sorcery. He was, however, rescued from the inhumane act by some Good Samaritans and rushed to the hospital where he received lifesaving treatment.

Miffed by the development, the Director of the Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW), Dr. Leo Igwe, has met the Benue State chapter of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to get justice for Pa Justin Kyadoo.

And on September 28, 2022, the media space was awash with reports of the death of two people mobbed to death by irate youths at Mbaaku Mbasombo in Gwer East Local Government Area of the state on suspicion of killing through witchcraft.

The victims of the jungle justice were Kwaghange Ugbu and Atuur Shaaja. The duo were reportedly tied with ropes on their necks and dragged around the village before they were pummeled to death. The incident, according to the locals, who preferred to lie low, was triggered by the sudden death of one David Nongobo, a native of Mbaaku Mbasombo. The young Nongobo, who slumped while working on the farm, was said to have recently completed his secondary education. He was rushed to the village health care centre where he was confirmed dead on arrival.

As soon as the news of the death of the young man broke in the village, some youths mobilised themselves to the home of the two elderly men, Ugbu and Shaaja, who were relatives of the deceased and accused them of killing him through witchcraft.

The duo received severe beating and suffered deep cuts with machetes and axes. The mob was not done with their barbaric operation. They tied ropes around their necks and dragged them all over the village until they gave up the ghost, ignoring their pleas of innocence.

The Benue examples are not peculiar to that state alone. Virtually all parts of the country are found with similar incidents of barbarism. Besides the aged being pigeonholed as witches and wizards, kids with exceptional gifts are branded as witches and dragged before men of God or native doctors for deliverance. The exorcism is carried out in a brutal fashion. Some hapless victims are beaten to death or maimed under the guise of deliverance. Even people with mental ailments are labeled as witches and sent to local psychiatric homes where they are subjected to all manner of inhuman treatments.

The rural communities have become killing fields and the criminal elements are having a field day because the average black man or woman holds the belief that every affliction or tribulation is the handiwork of village witches and wizards. The acts of man’s inhumanity to man have become so rampant that anyone growing old sees old age as a curse rather than a blessing!

A few years ago, a group of aged people in a community in Kaduna staged a protest, urging the state government to save them from being lynched by those who tied their longevity to witchcraft. Ironically, this category of people would see old age as a curse rather than a blessing.

We all desire to grow old but not everyone would be comfortable slipping into second childhood in communities where the youths, who themselves would not want to die young, engage in the primitive pastime of eliminating old men and women on mere suspicion of witchcraft practice in a 21st Century Nigeria.

We call on government at all levels to shift attention to this barbarism and put in place legislation against this jungle justice. Anyone, not the elderlies, can fall victim. Nigeria should not be dragged back to the medieval Europe where witches and wizards were tied to stakes and burnt alive.

Credit: blueprint