In another gut wrenching and bizarre
revelation by the Child's Right And
Rehabilitation Network(CRARN) a 40year old
man, John Friday Akpan from Akwa Ibom
State, resident in Calabar the Cross River
State capital, is now explaining to the police
how he heeded the advice of a herbalist, "Dr."
Okokon and eventually tagged his two
children, Elisha Friday Akpan and Esther
Friday Akpan as witches and wizards.
An act reminiscent of the nailing of Jesus
Christ on the Cross, Friday Akpan subjected
his two children aged, 12 and 6 respectively,
to harrowing treatment by nailing them to a
plank in shape of a cross and locking them
up in a dark, thatch hut without food for
weeks. He claimed that the children took his
money to their "master in the witchcraft
coven and therefore deserve no mercy". He
told the police.
Following weeks starvation, the two children
whose emaciated and dirty physical
appearance replicate the gory images of
starving children in famine-ravaged Somalia
and war-torn Sudan said they survived by
water which was supplied to them by one of
the man's kids from another woman.
"Our sister, Peace usually bring us water
inside the hut when our father and our
mother had gone out".
Esther said.
Their father, the kids said, used to reside in
Akpabuyo, Cross River State, Nigeria with the
family where he sent them to a private
school, Regent Nursery and Primary School,
Ikot Nkanda but when their mother died and
the man took another wife, Iquo, the story
changed.
"My mother (stepmother), said the woman
who used to live near our house in Akpabuyo
gave us food and she put something
(witchcraft spell) in the food and when we
ate it we changed to bird at night and took
our fathers money to 'our master' in the
witchcraft world".
Elisha who is a JSS one
student of Regent said.
According to the kids, Elisha was alleged to
have taken 4,000 Naira while Esther took
2,000 Naira and that angered their father
and step-mother who started beating them
severely and denying them food "because
they said we took their money to our master
in the witchcraft coven. This is something I
don’t even understand"
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