Two 8-year-old children, Mary Odiong and Ekong Asua, both from Okobo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, narrowly escaped after they were accused of being witches and tortured by their own relatives.
According to reports from Punch Newspaper, one of the kids, Mary, from Okopedi village of the LGA, was subjected to the inhuman treatment shortly after an uncle died from HIV/AIDS related ailment and his death was attributed to her, with the belief that she was the ones that infected the man with the deadly virus spiritually.
She narrated her ordeal to newsmen thus:
The people in my family called me and started asking me questions whether I was a witch and why I killed my uncle. I told them that I did not know anything about what they were talking about
They started beating me. They hit me with cutlasses. They cut my buttocks with knives.
After the beating became too much, I lost consciousness. Later, I woke up to find myself in the bush. I have been living on the streets since last month without food and shelter.
On his part, Ekong Asua, from Oti-Oro village, his ordeal was equally pathetic. He was also subjected to bouts of brutal acts by his uncles who accused him of killing his parents through wizardry. His parents had earlier died some weeks back and his uncles held him responsible for the deaths.
This is his story:
My uncles told me that they went somewhere to find out why my parents died. They said they were told that I killed both of them through witchcraft. They tied my hands and started beating me up with native sugar cane and asked me to confess.
When I insisted that I knew nothing about the death of my parents, they took me to a bush, where I met Odiong. Both of us has been living on the streets since then.
What should be done to these wicked uncles?