If an advocacy group has its way, a church programme against witchcraft scheduled for Mbeiri in the Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State, must not be allowed to see the light of the day.
The group known as, Advocacy for Alleged Witches, is piqued that a church pastor, Angel Uzoma has scheduled a crusade for August 30, at his church premises during which he intends to mount an anti-witch campaign in the state.
The group’s director, Leo Igwe has therefore asked the state police command and the Department of State Services, to halt the plan by the pastor to mount the anti-witch programme because its outcome will result to the murder of alleged witches. Igwe displayed a photograph of the billboard for the event already mounted in different parts of the state with the theme, ‘That Witch Must Die’ to drive home his case.
For him, the event should not be allowed because its outcome will instigate and provoke witch-hunt in the state. “This event instigates and sanctifies accusation, persecution and murder of alleged witches” even as suspected witches are often attacked and killed during and after such programmes, he further warned.
The opposition raised by the advocacy group against the publicly advertised anti-witch religious programme has serious merit. Both the theme of the programme and our experience in allegations of witchcraft make it mandatory that our law enforcement agencies cannot afford to turn a blind eye to that potentially offensive and lawless church activity.
‘That witch must die’ conveys the unmistakable impression that there exists a witch. And when found, death penalty albeit, through jungle justice must be the punishment for it. But that goes against the laws of the country which criminalises suspicions for witchcraft or any illegal action taken to avenge the suspicion.
So the advocacy group was well on point when it contended that the programme will instigate, sanctify accusation of witchcraft and possibly lead to the murder of suspected witches. That is the reading of the message contained in the billboards mounted in different parts of the state. Or, how else will the alleged witches die during the church event if not through jungle justice?
Even if the pastor could also procure the death of suspected witches through some supernatural means or touted power of miracles, that also cannot be justified on any ground. There is everything wrong with the theme of the church crusade and the activities to actualise it to be allowed to proceed as advertised.
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Curiously, it has taken the protestations of the Advocacy for Alleged Witches to draw the attention of the law enforcement agencies to this potent danger. That is the case which people have against the security agencies when they accuse them of not being proactive enough or intelligence driven in the performance of their duties. It is a huge disappointment that billboards advertising death sentence for witch suspects could find their way in and around Imo State with the security agencies looking the other way.
Not with our experience in issues concerning alleged witchcraft. The reported jungle justice which has come to denote the fate of witch suspects across the country does not leave anybody in the comfort of mind that witch suspects during the event will fare any better. There must be suspected witches during the event (either within the congregation or outside of it) else its purpose will be defeated.
Witches will not die if there are no witches. The programme theme admits the existence of witches together with all the devilish powers allegedly attributed to them. Its objective is therefore to instigate, provoke, find and kill a witch or witches. It must achieve this objective for the campaign to garner popular appeal and succeed.
There is the temptation to rationalise the church programme as part of the Pastor’s right to freedom of worship as effectively guaranteed by the country’s constitution. The instant case is a warped conception of religious freedom because the programme seeks to criminalise and levy death sentence on witch suspects. The laws of this country do not allow a church such powers. That is the dividing line between freedom of worship and the kind of activity the religious group is about to embark upon.
This is not the first time programmes that deal with witchcraft will generate heated controversy. If a purely academic seminar organised by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN could generate demonstrations with calls for its outright cancelation, it is inconceivable how one in which alleged witches are to face jungle justice can be allowed to hold.
An international conference on witchcraft slated for UNN in 2019 with the theme, “Witchcraft, meanings, factors and practices” had led to serious protests from various religious organisations. The demonstrating church groups had alleged that the event was all about the gathering of witches and called for its outright put off.
The pressure was so much so that the UNN authorities had to prevail on the organisers of the conference the, Prof. B.I.C. Ijomah of the Centre for Policy Studies and Research to change the theme to, “Dimensions of Human Behaviour” before it was allowed to proceed. But that controversy forced the keynote speaker, Prof. David Ker to withdraw.
The Director of the centre Prof. Egodi Uchendu, regretted how ordinary academic conference was twisted out of context to create confusion even as she expressed happiness that the controversy did not significantly affect the participation level. Nonetheless, the conference gave a good account of itself.
In his paper titled, “The wealthy are no witches: Towards an Epistemology and Ideology of Witchcraft among the Igbo of Nigeria”, Prof Damian Opata said the way witchcraft is propagated and believed by some Nigerians has continued to kill development of knowledge on the issue.
He may have had the likes of the emerging church event in Imo State in mind when he said, “Pastors, seers in the foreign religions and charismatic priests in variegated persuasions very frequently use perceived attacks by witches and wizards to put fear in the minds and hearts of their various congregations”. The truth he said, is that witches and wizards exist for those who believe they exist and do not have existence for those who do not believe in them.
It may be added that these pastors, seers in foreign religions take to this course of action in order to hold their adherents hostage, manipulate and exploit them. And they largely succeed because of fear, poverty, illiteracy and fickleness of the human mind.
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology UNN, Peter Jazzy Eze toed similar lines when he argued that witchcraft did not exist but existed in the minds of people who believe in it. He contended that science and technology have overtaken superstitious beliefs in witchcraft which have no empirical validity.
The contributions of these scholars are no doubt, of great value in advancing knowledge on the subject matter. Ironically, the heuristic value of the contributions would have been lost, had the UNN seminar been cancelled outright as canvassed by those who saw it as nothing but a gathering of witches and wizards.
Ironically, it is intolerance of such robust discussions that has overtime, sustained weird beliefs in witches and witchcraft on these shores. Had sufficient awareness been created on the subject matter, it would have been a herculean task selling the idea of witchcraft to the citizenry such that is about to be exploited through the controversial church programme.
Then, we would not have got to the point one pastor or magician touting to be a seer could hoodwink and draw large audience on the guise that witches must die during or after his crusade. Ignorance, poverty and disease provide the oxygen these pastors require to sustain their trade.
It is no coincidence that climes where people take easy resort to superstition fall within the underdeveloped or developing nations of the world characterised by abject poverty. So, the causative factors for such beliefs are known. They can be realistically addressed by tackling ignorance, poverty and disease through meaningful development such that addresses the material conditions of our people consigned into hewers of wood and fetchers of water.
As long as these huge disparities in human capital development index persist in this country, so long will all manner of people exploit the citizenry through weird beliefs and ideologies. The crusade billed for Imo State is one of such; its offensive theme and direction must change if the event must proceed.
