Evil In The Name Of Christ -By Albert Afeso Akanbi

The woman on the billboard whose picture is attached to this post is Helen Ukpabio, the founder of the Calabar based Liberty Gospel Church…

The current evil, unspeakable atrocities and gross abuse going on against kids between the ages of 1 to 15 today in southern Nigeria, especially in Akwa Ibom State, can mostly be attributed to her…

At a time when civilized countries like China are doing everything they can to harness the gifts of kids the world has identified as “star kids” and “gifted children” , self acclaimed “Lady Apostle” Helen Upkabio and are co travellers in their Voyage of Evil, believe the only way to legitimize their spirituality and outdo their competitors is the naming and denounciation of kids as “witches”…

In her books, movies, crusades and preaching, she has consistently insisted that a child who is often sickly, deformed, bedwets, sleep walks, often running off to play, talk in her sleep, displays intelligence not consistent with kids her age, and so on, is a which…

As a result, over 15,000 children have either been denounced, abadonded, stigmatized, mobbed, rejected by family and even killed in the last 10 years in Akwa Ibom State alone…and largely because of her, other charlatans have arisen and taken it upon themselves the task of “delivering” and “exorcising” the witchcraft from children, even as some of them charge as much as from between 200,000 to 400,000 naira from gullible and unsuspecting parents and wards…and most of these exorcism are done under very gruesome conditions, sometimes leading to severe injuries to the kids…amd for parents who can’t pay, the kids would be detained like battery chickens under very horrendous conditions, many times without food for weeks…

People like Mr Sam Itauma, founder of the Eket based Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network CRARN, who has been working to assist this kids have been variously attacked…his orphanage home in Eket is grossly under funded and thoroughly overpopulated…

Over the years, I have written articles in the papers about this issue, in fact, my upcoming book whose picture is also attached to this post, is intended to call the attention of Nigerians to this evil going on in the name of Christ in southern Nigeria.

From information I gathered, I understand that being a former member of the Olumba Olumba Obu fraternity, Helen herself maybe suffering from psychological problems…but the problem now is that, she has managed to breathe the confusion inside her head into the world around her and depressingly too, she’s making so much money from it…

This is very sad, and my greatest dispaointment is in a society that permits mentally, morally and spiritually bankrupt people like this woman to continue to operate…

A society that eats up it’s own brightest kids is automatically setting the mechanism for it’s own demise…this is a fact I like Nigerians to allow to sink in, especially given the fact that ours is a country with over 70 million of her almost 200 million comprising kids between the ages of 1 to 15 years, and yet over 30 million of them are at risk of one form of abuse or the other…

From the 10.5 million mostly girl child who are out of school, more than the entire population of three countries by the way, to the 2.1 million who are scattered across various IDP camps in northern Nigeria, displaced by terror, to child labourers, child artisans, streets hawkers, child househelps, just name it, ours is a society in shambles when it come to issues of child welfare… And these conmen and women parading themselves as prophets, are making matters worse…

While the government and big corporations appears to be stealing the wealth of the people of southern Nigeria, mentally disturbed people like Helen are stealing their conscience by making them do unspeakable acts of evil to their kids…

Among countless victims of these “prophets” are a girl of 15 who had a three inches nail driven into her skull in a bid to make her confess, a boy of 9 who was made to drink a concoction of cement, another who was bathed in acid, all in a bid to make them confess to thier witchacraft…

In as much as I do not claim to understand the concept of witchcraft, or cannot say whether or not it exists, I am using this opportunity to call on society to look into this issue of child abuse…and to say it is time government begun to regulate religious activities in the country…

Thank you…