- Mass enlightenment is required to stop this practice driven by superstition
There are some Nigerian communities, notably rural ones, where women come under accusation of witchcraft following the death of their husbands. Some of these women get ostracised, others banished, or – worse – lynched over bereavements that already constitute untold grief, and for which they are further subjected to abuse by way of imposed liability for losses that are in themselves crushing and destabilising to them. It is what in legal parlance is called double jeopardy.
This is way into the 21st century and it might sound strange that such things happen. But they do, especially in rural communities where culture holds tyrannical sway. An instance was the case of a 54-year-old mother of two who was early this year restored to the Umunankwo community in Ogbaru council area of Anambra State after she had been banished for almost a year over allegations of being a witch. Nneka Uzor, a widow, was accused of witchcraft by three brothers-in-law and was shown in a viral video clip sometime in April 2023 being led out of Umunankwo by community members who hurled abuses at her while two masqueraders flogged her.
In the said clip, the townsfolk could be heard accusing Uzor of poisoning the community’s food stock and refusing to go for appeasement with community gods, as they led her to a road junction where they pronounced her banished from the community. At that point, the widow collapsed on the road, apparently from exhaustion. The three brothers-in-law who were her principal accusers were later arrested and arraigned before the Children, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Court in Awka at the instance of State Commissioner for Women and Social Welfare, Ify Obinabo, who promised to get the woman reunited with the community.
It was in January, this year, that Uzor got her reprieve following a reconciliation meeting that took place at the palace of the traditional ruler of Umunankwo. A spokesperson for the women and social welfare commissioner issued a statement saying the commissioner, community leaders and Uzor’s accusers, among others, were present at the reconciliation parley. The statement indicated that upon a directive by the community ruler, the townsfolk gathered at the same location where Uzor had been pronounced banished to receive her back. Masqueraders were as well on hand to accompany her on her return to the community. The statement noted that after the widow was brought back, traditional rites were performed to purify her and make her fit to participate in community activities, with her principal accusers apologising for their actions.
For the Umunankwo widow, all’s well that ends well as the saying goes. Few widows, however, get as lucky with being restored as she was. Some widows pay the supreme price. There was the reported instance of an elderly widow named Martina Itagbo who, in mid-2023, was mob-lynched in the rustic community of Akampa, Cross River State. Her plaintive plea for her life was ignored by youths who kicked and hit her repeatedly with cudgels as they pronounced her “Witch!!, Witch!!, Witch!!,” before dousing her with gasoline and setting her frail body ablaze. Her agonised cry echoed into the distance as she succumbed to a fiery death. Reports said older community members who were on hand simply stayed aloof and watched the mob of youths execute the gory justice of the jungle on hapless Itagbo.
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Witch-hunt of widows is a function of the patriarchal structure of Nigerian society. Men lose their wives too, but nobody ever accuses them of wizardry in apportioning blame for those wives’ death. It is not so with widows, however. When they lose their husbands, even to evident extraneous causes like medical ailments or natural accidents, women typically come under societal indictment as if they were some presumed super-custodians who failed in their duty and must thus account to society for that egregious failure. Worse is that some widows get suspected by communities of orchestrating their husbands’ death; and in the absence of empirical evidence, society arraigns them in the metaphysical dock of superstition with accusations of witchcraft.
In other societies, widowhood could be positively transformational for the woman in socio-economic terms through inheritance of the late husband’s vast estate. In our clime, though, widowhood is perceived a curse because rather than receiving the support they need during their time of grief and be allowed unhindered right to the husbands’ possessions, many widows get blamed for their husbands’ death, accused of witchcraft and stigmatised or tortured outright, and blocked from inheritance of their husbands’ estates. In effect, society that should have provided them a support structure in their grief becomes their arch tormentor.
There are ample indications that the syndrome is a form of class oppression. Widows tend to get accused of witchcraft more when the family isn’t too well off, or when there are only a few children. In other words, the poorer in means and population the family was when the man died, the likelier the widow would be accused of being a witch. She might even be suspected of being responsible for the man’s modest means and low fertility while alive. On the other hand, women from large and affluent families rarely get accused of being witches; but that is without prejudice to the chances of being blocked from inheritance rights on the husbands’ estates.
Meanwhile, the damage that witch-hunting does to widows goes beyond social stigmatisation; it also grievously hazards their mental health. Following psychological trauma and grief suffered from losing a loved one and pillar of support, a widow tends to lapse into mental destabilisation, which compounded by societal animus could tip her into depression. Medical experts say the absence of a strong mental health support system in our clime often leaves affected women emotionally scarred and with behavioural changes that a hostile society could interpret as inadvertent confirmation of the suspicion of witchcraft.
It might be a form of catharsis – though a self-damning one – or sheer coping mechanism that some women who were accused by their communities of witchcraft eventually go public to own up to that label. This tendency echoed the infamous Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s in colonial Massachusetts, United States, where community hysteria led to rash accusations against many people of being witches – based on flimsy suspicions, superstitious motivations or, indeed, petty personal squabbles. More than 200 people were accused of witchcraft at the Salem trials, with 19 found guilty and executed. But many of those who escaped the noose did that only by falsely ‘confessing’ their involvement in witchcraft as an indication of repentance and penance. That might be what reported confessions to witchcraft by some widows in Nigerian rural communities is all about.
Witch-hunt of widows is driven by superstition, which is a form of ignorance and symptomises lack of enlightenment. We argue that an effective antidote would be for the government to step up its mass literacy efforts and ensure better enlightenment of the Nigerian citizenry, especially those in rural communities. The more enlightened a society gets, the less the tendency to superstition.
There is also the need to more vigorously promote scientific culture, which inculcates rational mindset in people. True, human beings aren’t always rational; but the scientific culture has helped some advanced societies to do away with irrational superstition and mainstream empirical thinking as a way of life. And this has helped in the developmental strides of those societies. Superstition is a sign of a sick group mentality and it is high time Nigerian communities were weaned from that malaise.
