Music & news to your desktop
After watching the amazing Dispatches programme on Channel 4: Saving Africa’s Witch Children, my spirit was troubled. The programme was basically about how young children in Nigeria from the tender age of eight upwards were targeted in their community as being sorcerers (aka wizards and witches).
Now I’ll be real with you, I totally believe that the power of witchcraft can work on people (being the Pentecostal minister’s son that I am), but no way do I believe a little child should be victimised in such a way.
I actually felt bad watching this, to know that a so-called ‘godly’ person would go that low to throw acid on their own child, and by this point the rest of my Twitter was with me also. These young African children were beaten, abused, tortured and murdered; all because a certain preacher in that community said they were told by God that they were ‘of the Devil’…
Some of these ‘prophets and preachers’ would tell the parent of the ‘possessed’ child that they would need to perform an exorcism – otherwise the child would bring misfortune to the family. But it didn’t stop there. To perform such acts the parent would have to give them thousands of pounds to do the ‘exorcism’, some even sold their homes just to get the money. Something/someone needed to intervene at this point.
A man from the UK by the name ofGary Foxcroft has devoted his time and energy to helping these young children, and whilst some might say he just wants to be some sort of wannabe saviour to a needy nation, someone who just wants an MBE from the Queen, I personally think he went there to truly help these young people. Gary and his wife set up a charity called Steeping Stones Nigeria, which helped home, clothe and feed the orphaned youth (well I say orphaned, but their parents were still alive in the village next door, so call them un-wanted shall we say).
Gary raised enough money from people in the UK to open up a school so that they could be educated, and one day better themselves and move out of their situation. And that’s another thing – they actually showed viewers where the money went, unlike a lot of other charities asking for money on the telly… maybe the UK government should look into that.
Luckily the African government saw sense with the help of Gary Foxcroft and made a law that protected these young children. So now, if anyone was to even say that a child was a witch, they’d get ten years in prison. Harsh yeah? It was a really eye-opening programme and it makes me think how lucky some of our young children in the UK actually are. Toys R Us are going to make a killing come X-Mas time!
