The 27-year-old woman, whose name is not disclosed, appeared in court charged with the murder of a five-months-old baby. Trying to justify her actions a young mother claimed that her daughter repeatedly turned into a python trying to swallow her alive.
These alleged transformations made the woman threw her own baby into a pit toilet, where the innocent girl died. Later the woman confessed that she had heard voices telling her “to take the baby back to the waters she had come from”.
By the end of the trial the woman was ordered to be detained and referred to a mental institution for examination. This is not the first time children became the victims of insane parents or those willing to justify the murder with witchcraft.
One month ago a 10-year-old boy was thrown into Imo River in Akwa Ibom state over witchcraft accusations but luckily survived. A similar incident occured in the same area where three children and their father were accused of witchcraft and escaped lynching.
In Nigeria, some pastors have incorporated African witchcraft beliefs into their brand of Christianity resulting in a campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered.
The preachers make money out of the fear providing costly exorcism services of their parents and their communities. In the states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River about 15,000 children were branded as witches and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets
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