CRARN RENEWS CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHILD WITCH-HUNT

Culled from The Nigerian Vanguard

Eket (Akwa Ibom) – Mr Divine Asubob, an oil services worker at the Qua Iboe Oil Fields, operated by Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, was on Sunday crushed to death at a police check point at Uquo Community in the Esit Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom.

The deceased met his untimely death when he was flagged down by policemen at the check point and his motorcycle was hit by a truck coming on top speed from the back.

The policemen at the check point were said to have hurriedly left the scene and returned to the Esit Eket Police Station to forestall possible reprisal attack from the community.

Some of the participants who spoke at the interactive session were against the practice of child witch stigmatization, abandonment and torture. Equally, some freely expressed their belief in witchcraft but were unsure of how to relate it with the problem in the face of their belief.

A female participant who also offered to be a community volunteer narrated her experience three abandoned children who used to take refuge at a local market in the area. She averred that the children were have suffered various forms of abuses as there was there no assistance offered to them by any one since they were believed to be withes. A combined team of CRARN-YHN rescue team was dispatched to rescue the children. They did not however meet the children who were said to have roamed to another location in search of food.

The body of the victim was reportedly abandoned at the scene of the incident for three hours before it was taken to the morgue in Emmanuel General Hospital in Eket.

Emmanuel Ikott, a member of the family of the deceased said that Asubob, 32, was a technician with Petrostuff Nig. Ltd and that he was on his annual vacation when the incident happened.

"Asubob took his leave to complete his house project only to die carelessly, due to the N20 sydrome of policemen and now they have run away and left him in a pool of blood.

"The community will not accept this and we shall ensure that justice is done," Ikott said.

Police sources in Esit Eket confirmed the incident but declined to give further details. (NAN)

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