The rainy season is over and the Niger Delta is lush and humid.
This southern edge of West Africa, where Nigeria's wealth pumps out
of oil and gas fields to bypass millions of its poorest people, is
a restless place. In the small delta state of Akwa Ibom, the
tension and the poverty has delivered an opportunity for a new and
terrible phenomenon that is leading to the abuse and the murder of
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. And it is being done in
the name of Christianity.Almost everyone goes to church here.
Driving through the town of Esit Eket, the rust-streaked signs,
tarpaulins hung between trees and posters on boulders, advertise a
church for every third or fourth house along the road. Such names
as New Testament Assembly, Church of God Mission, Mount Zion
Gospel, Glory of God, Brotherhood of the Cross, Redeemed,
Apostalistic. Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a
living by 'deliverances' - exorcisms - for people beset by
witchcraft, something seen to cause anything from divorce, disease,
accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a competitive
market, but by local standards a lucrative one.
But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much
more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children
- naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents
and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned,
slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased
off into the bush.
Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance -
sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average
working man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might
return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent
wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the
street.
This is not just a few cases. This is becoming commonplace. In Esit
Eket, up a nameless, puddled-and-potholed path is a concrete shack
stuffed to its fetid rafters with roughly made bunk beds. Here,
three to a bed like battery chickens, sleep victims of the besuited
Christian pastors and their hours-long, late-night services.
Ostracised and abandoned, these are the children a whole community
believes fervently are witches.
Sam Ikpe-Itauma is one of the few people in this area who does not
believe what the evangelical 'prophets' are preaching. He opened
his house to a few homeless waifs he came across, and now he tries
his best to look after 131.
'The neighbours were not happy with me and tell me "you are
supporting witches". This project was an accident, I saw children
being abandoned and it was very worrying. I started with three
children, then every day it increased up to 15, so we had to open
this new place,' he says. 'For every maybe five children we see on
the streets, we believe one has been killed, although it could be
more as neighbours turn a blind eye when a witch child
disappears.
'It is good we have this shelter, but it is under constant attack.'
As he speaks two villagers walk past, at the end of the yard,
pulling scarfs across their eyes to hide the 'witches' from their
sight.
Ikpe-Itauma's wife, Elizabeth, acts as nurse to the injured
children and they have called this place the Child Rights and
Rehabilitation Network, a big name for a small refuge. It has found
support from a charity running a school in the area, Stepping
Stones Nigeria, which is trying to help with money to feed the
children, but the numbers turning up here are a huge
challenge.
Mary Sudnad, 10, grimaces as her hair is pulled into corn rows by
Agnes, 11, but the scalp just above her forehead is bald and
blistered. Mary tells her story fast, in staccato, staring fixedly
at the ground.
'My youngest brother died. The pastor told my mother it was because
I was a witch. Three men came to my house. I didn't know these men.
My mother left the house. Left these men. They beat me.' She pushes
her fists under her chin to show how her father lay, stretched out
on his stomach on the floor of their hut, watching. After the
beating there was a trip to the church for 'a deliverance'.
A day later there was a walk in the bush with her mother. They
picked poisonous 'asiri' berries that were made into a draught and
forced down Mary's throat. If that didn't kill her, her mother
warned her, then it would be a barbed-wire hanging. Finally her
mother threw boiling water and caustic soda over her head and body,
and her father dumped his screaming daughter in a field. Drifting
in and out of consciousness, she stayed near the house for a long
time before finally slinking off into the bush.Mary was seven. She
says she still doesn't feel safe. She says: 'My mother doesn't love
me.' And, finally, a tear streaks down her beautiful face.
Gerry was picked out by a 'prophetess' at a prayer night and named
as a witch. His mother cursed him, his father siphoned petrol from
his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old face.
Gerry's facial blistering is as visible as the trauma in his dull
eyes. He asks every adult he sees if they will take him home to his
parents: 'It's not them, it's the prophetess, I am scared of
her.'
Nwaeka is about 16. She sits by herself in the mud, her eyes
rolling, scratching at her stick-thin arms. The other children are
surprisingly patient with her. The wound on her head where a nail
was driven in looks to be healing well. Nine- year-old Etido had
nails, too, five of them across the crown of his downy head. Its
hard to tell what damage has been done. Udo, now 12, was beaten and
abandoned by his mother. He nearly lost his arm after villagers,
finding him foraging for food by the roadside, saw him as a witch
and hacked at him with machetes.
Magrose is seven. Her mother dug a pit in the wood and tried to
bury her alive. Michael was found by a farmer clearing a ditch,
starving and unable to stand on legs that had been flogged
raw.
Ekemini Abia has the look of someone in a deep state of shock. Both
ankles are circled with gruesome wounds and she moves at a painful
hobble. Named as a witch, her father and elders from the church
tied her to a tree, the rope cutting her to the bone, and left the
13-year-old there alone for more than a week.
There are sibling groups such as Prince, four, and Rita, nine. Rita
told her mum she had dreamt of a lovely party where there was lots
to eat and to drink. The belief is that a witch flies away to the
coven at night while the body sleeps, so Rita's sweet dream was
proof enough: she was a witch and because she had shared food with
her sibling - the way witchcraft is spread - both were abandoned.
Victoria, cheeky and funny, aged four, and her seven-year-old
sister Helen, a serene little girl. Left by their parents in the
shell of an old shack, the girls didn't dare move from where they
had been abandoned and ate leaves and grass.
The youngest here is a baby. The older girls take it in turn to
sling her on their skinny hips and Ikpe-Itauma has named her
Amelia, after his grandmother. He estimates around 5,000 children
have been abandoned in this area since 1998 and says many bodies
have turned up in the rivers or in the forest. Many more are never
found. 'The more children the pastor declares witches, the more
famous he gets and the more money he can make,' he says. 'The
parents are asked for so much money that they will pay in
instalments or perhaps sell their property. This is not what
churches should be doing.'
Although old tribal beliefs in witch doctors are not so deeply
buried in people's memories, and although there had been indigenous
Christians in Nigeria since the 19th century, it is American and
Scottish Pentecostal and evangelical missionaries of the past 50
years who have shaped these fanatical beliefs. Evil spirits,
satanic possessions and miracles can be found aplenty in the Bible,
references to killing witches turn up in Exodus, Deuteronomy and
Galatians, and literal interpretation of scriptures is a popular
crowd-pleaser.
