Even today, killings based on superstition persist in several sub-Saharan African nations.
To bring attention and advocate for a stop to the killings, the founder of Advocacy for Accused Witches, Leo Igwe, spoke to an audience at the University of New Mexico Continuing Education Building on the history, causes and impacts of witch hunts in Africa. AFAW has responded to over 300 cases of witch hunts and ritual attacks in the past few years, Igwe said.
Igwe said he was inspired to intervene in witch hunts after finishing his PhD in African studies in Germany and being told that he must study with distance and detachment.
“When I came out, I was told, ‘you have to go and lecture, write academic papers, become a professor.’ Really? Professor of what? Recounting these cases? I said, ‘no. I will do both,’” Igwe said. “They said, ‘no, you can’t do both. Because when you do both, (you) become attached.’ I said, ‘what does that mean?’ I’m still trying to understand that. People are dying in our communities, you don’t want to attach, you just analyze it and get promoted? Write journal articles? Up ‘til now, it has not made sense to me.”
Igwe shared the story of a family he recently helped escape persecution as a result of witchcraft allegations. After watching their son collapse at a soccer game, a blind man and his wife sought out faith healers. What occurred was likely an epileptic seizure, Igwe said, but the family locked access to knowledge or treatment of epilepsy and so sought out a faith healer, who gave them carved wooden deities, saying that would heal the boy.
A relative of the man and his wife, who currently lives in the U.S., visited the village, saw the faith-healing paraphernalia and accused the family of witchcraft, calling the Nigerian police who then arrested and beat the family, throwing the wife into the trunk of a car. She was only released after the intervention of AFAW.
Igwe said poverty and poor access to healthcare drive Nigerians to seek out faith healers for conditions such as dementia and epilepsy. Christian Nigerians, who often have more wealth and power than non-Christians, sometimes see traditional medicine as a form of witchcraft and will weaponize the police and extrajudicial violence against the accused.
Both untreated conditions and faith-based healing practices make sick individuals vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft punishable by expulsion from villages, beatings and being burned alive.
Igwe said colonialism largely influenced and stoked patterns of religious fervor throughout Africa.
“Americans, they come, they bring archangel Gabriel. Then (people) come from Saudi Arabia, they’re also bringing archangel Gabriel. Which archangel Gabriel do I go to? People are confused,” Igwe said. “But they don’t just bring angel Gabriel; they also bring money. And in an impoverished country, people are going to accept angel Gabriel even if they don’t believe it.”
The police in Nigeria also serve to exacerbate the problem, Igwe said. Police must be paid to begin and continue investigations, with investigations deeper into one case costing over 700,000 Naira, or approximately 500 USD.
The continuation of witch hunts is also caused in part by a failure of Americans and Western academics, Igwe said.
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“Anything about Africa is looking back and always valorizing magic and magical thinking,” Igwe said. “This is how your universities are indirectly legitimizing. So I ask them, ‘why can’t we talk about Africa looking forward? Why can’t you talk about creativity looking forward? They’re talking about going to Mars, they’re talking about solar energy, harnessing those energies and all that?’ Now, if you want to come to Africa you say, ‘How are Africans harnessing nature?’ My grandfather — harnessing the nature is what you want me to study today? Something is wrong with you. Something is wrong with all these faculties. Shut them down.”
Saying that witch hunts are a part of Nigerian culture is the same as saying mass-shootings or suicide are part of American culture, Igwe said.
The talk was hosted by a local skeptic group, New Mexicans for Science and Reason. Benjamin Radford, a member of NMSR and a friend of Igwe, said he’s directing a documentary on Advocacy for Alleged Witches. Radford said NMSR’s main focus is on encouraging critical thought regarding supernatural belief, making Igwe’s presentation an excellent fit for their lecture series.
“The main focus is on encouraging critical thinking. So, whether it’s Bigfoot, astrology, alternative medicine,” Radford said. “But there are real consequences to those beliefs. It’s basically trying to encourage people to say, ‘Hey, look, some of these beliefs may seem silly, like, if you believe in Bigfoot, whatever, I don’t care. But there are very real consequences to beliefs, right? And this lecture is a perfect example of that.”
Addison Fulton is the culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
