On her part, 11-year-old Mary Sunday Udo from Mbo in Mbo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, with a rough acid scar on her forehead, said: "I am in Primary 2. My mother poured acid on me, saying I am a witch because they said so at Qua Iboe Church in Oron. My mother and father, who are now living in Efoi in Eket Local Government Council, threw me out of the house and left me to suffer and fend for myself. My father's name is Emman Sunday Udo and my mother, Esther Sunday Udo. We are three children in the family. No one took me to the hospital and I roamed the streets of Eket like that until the wound healed naturally. Sometimes, other children would flog me and chase me away, saying I am a witch. "I had no house to stay so I joined other children at the tent in the bush by Marina Road. Sometimes we dispose refuse for people to get money to cook and eat or we get food from refuse or the bush. Adult men sometimes come around at night and want to make love to us (the girls) but we will run away. The small boys with us sometimes go to steal for us to eat. It was hell for us until we were rescued."
TWELVE-year-old Ekemini Okon Samuel, stigmatized as a witch and abandoned before the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network (CRARN) in Eket Local Government Government area of Akwa Ibom State rescued her last month, was in tears when she told her story: "The Methodist Church in Afaha-Akpenedi, Esit Eket said I am a witch and since then, my father started maltreating me. My father tied my hands and legs with a hard rope and locked me up in a shed where we keep goats and chicken. He kept me there without food and water and every morning, he will come beating me and tie me the more. "My father was always maltreating me and nobody cared. He said I was a witch. When he realized that I was malnourished and dying, he loosened me and dumped me in the bush to die until my elder brother who brought me here, rescued me.
"Before now, I lived a normal life at home and school. I attended primary school at Afaha Akpenedi and I was in Primary 5. My father was always beating me and the church never cared. I am not a witch and I don't experience anything strange as a witch."
Another victim, Udo Etim Nkankanta, also 12, from Ikot Ekpene Udo in Nsit Ubiom, in tears, told his own story in his native Ibibio dialect: "I have never been to school before. My father never sent me to school. The local church in my area said I am a witch and my father and people in the community abandoned me. My father tied me to a pillar and beat me mercilessly until my left arm got broken and the bone shot out. He even put fire in my mouth and tortures me, saying that I am the devil causing all his problems. One day, some primary school children came around and started calling me a witch and took me to the nearby primary school at Ikot Akpene Udo, beat me and tried to burn me alive. They ran away when somebody came around."
CRARN finally rescued Udo in a bush. His arm was decaying and the bone was sticking out, with the sore covered with flies. He was malnourished and dying gradually before he was taken to the hospital.
Another victim, Master Michael Ita Isang, about nine years old from Oyoabasi in Oron, apparently shy and nervous, could not speak. But the President of CRARN, Mr. Sam Ikpe Itauma, narrated his story. "On August 15 this year, one of my coordinators met Michael along the Eket-Oron Road at Ikot Ubo, lying down in the flood. He stopped and tried to wake him up but Michael would not move and my coordinator presumed unknown persons must have killed him. So he left. "The following day, we went back to the scene but we did not find him. After some search, we spotted him inside the bush eating palm fruits. We took him in, dressed him up and brought him to the center and gave him first aid. He was dirty, malnourished and like a skeleton. He told us that his father took him to one Jesus Divine Ministry in Oron and the pastor said he and his sister were witches. Michael resisted but Esther, his sister, accepted under torture and they claimed they carried out deliverance on her.
"At a point, their father became ill and later died and everyone suspected Michael to have killed him with his witchcraft. His stepmother and father went to ascertain the cause of his father's death but discovered nothing. But they were always beating him up until Michael, then in JSS 1, found himself in the bush at Ikot Ubo."
In Calabar, the story is almost the same. Gideon Edet Okon, 13, disclosed: "For the past three years, I have lived in the park (Etim Edem Motor Park) and I earned my living by loading and running errand. On a good day, I make between N200 and N400. We live and rise with the big boys, who are thieves, but I don't steal. When they ask us to go for robbery, they will beat us when we resist.
"My father is sick and diabetic and my mother has since run away. I now also fend for my father. In most cases, I go to places of ceremonies to get remnants of food, especially at the State Library Complex. Sometimes I squat with my kid friends at a big building along the Highway, near an abandoned filling station.
"One big man, a soldier, very fat and dark is in charge of the house as security man. We helped him to cut the grass in the big compound. The man all the time will take one person to a room and make love to us through the anus. He did it to me once and after that, I ran away but he does it to other kids who continued to stay with him. Occasionally, I sleep in the park or my father's house at 29 Calabar Road, Calabar."
Inemesit Ekanem from Obioikot Ita, 10, Effiong Victor Okon, 10 and Ubong Asuquo Nyong from Akpabuyo Council of Cross River State suffered similar fate. For close to three years, they lived in the park and sometimes with the unknown soldier-security man. They have nowhere to sleep and don't go to school. Like many others, they carry load in the park to survive and go to public events and ceremonies to pick remnants of food.
Inemesit claimed that his father lives on Academy Street in Calabar but several visits there could not trace the man. Ubong, who claims to worship with the Deeper Life Church at Musaha Street, does not know anything about his parents. He has been a destitute on the streets of Calabar as long as he can remember. This is the fate of forsaken children commonly found in Eket, Esit Eket, Mbo and Oron in Akwa Ibom State. Abandoned, they are stigmatized as witches and wizards.
In other parts of Akwa Ibom State such as the capital, Uyo, Ikot Ekpene and Oron, as well as Calabar, Ikom, Ugep, Yala, Ogoja and others in Cross River State, they are fast becoming common sights on the streets, as destitute and hawkers. Some of them are easily taken away to other parts of Nigeria as victims of child trafficking and forced labor. Today, 125 of them have been rescued by CRARN and are currently being rehabilitated at Eket in Akwa Ibom State.
Worried by this problem, CRARN, in collaboration with Stepping Stones Nigeria (SSN), moved to rescue the stigmatized children and take them through formal education and rehabilitation at its headquarters in Ikot Afaha. At the CRARN office, the children, aged between three and 13, were seen crowded at the sitting room watching television donated by SSN for their recreation.
The Catholic Church in Eket, the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint and the Obong Victor Attah administration in Akwa Ibom State assisted in the construction of a permanent structure for CRARN to rehabilitate the children. One of the volunteers, David Emmanuel Umoren, who goes about searching for and picking children from the streets and bushes, explained: "In the bush, we see them suffering to eat in the small huts or tents they built in the bush. These huts, which they use waterproofs and abandoned rusty zincs to build, are just barely three feet high. They eat by sometimes going to people's farmland to steal cassava. Sometimes you see them around dustbins, picking garbage to eat in the name of food. The bad boys and okada riders go raping the girls at late night. Yet, some people turn around to say they are witches."
Umoren added: "At the initial stage, we experienced resistance because they did not know what we were doing. Sometimes you pick two out of three and one is left. Later, the one left will naturally follow. We have experienced cases of a few of them running away from the camp because they are used to street life and they feel uncomfortable with a place like this."
CRARN's President, Sam Ikpe Itauma, disclosed that he started the project in June 2003 when some people attacked some abandoned children in Eket. With scores of children found everywhere, he felt bad about it and tried to reach out to some friends to see how they could set up a non-governmental organization (NGO) to protect these children. At a point, they realized that protecting them alone was not enough. So in 2004, they came together to see how they could rehabilitate them, since no other organization was into rehabilitating abandoned children.
Now, CRARN is introducing skills acquisition to empower the children and equip them for the future. For now, the girls are being taught how to sew, with hairdressing to follow soon. The boys are made to learn carpentry, spraying, painting and other skills while still schooling at the CRARN Children Academy.
Eket-born Itauma, who is very familiar with stories of witchcraft in the area, laughed off that since his relationship with the children started, he had never heard any funny sound of witchcraft and his association with them had not had any effect on him, especially as he does not believe that anything can happen to him.
"I have been working with this children for the past four years. No child has metamorphosed into a cat, no child has hurt me and all of them are very lovely children, except that as normal children, they exhibit traits of stubbornness," he said.
Posts
