Shocking: Nigerian Villages Where Twin Babies Are Sacrificed!

Crude, Cruel, Absurd....call it any of those words and many  more and you won’t be wrong.  Decades after  Scottish missionary to Nigeria, Mary Slessor, championed the campaign that stopped the killing of twin children in Nigeria, twins are still not spared in some communities in Kwali and Abaji Local Government Areas of Abuja Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Nigeria. 

The journey into the villages of Tunga, Gomani, Zaiha, Dongoruwa, Tubudu, Kutara, Paiko began from Abuja-Lokoja highway. The connecting village was Dafa. And it was here that we parked our vehicle, hired two motorbikes to continue the journey because of the rough terrain.  The villages have a common language called Bassa just as they are united by their cultural heritages. They believe that twin babies are a taboo and the children desecrate the land, and must be dealt with accordingly, i.e. killed. The people are not Christians nor Muslims; they are traditionalists. 

No road, pipe- borne water, hospital, school., is a strong indication of lack of government presence in the communities. Yet they have villagers have representatives in the Council Areas, House of Representatives and Senate. They vote during elections.

Guide and interpreter: Before Sunday Vanguard set out on the journey, arrangement had been made with a guide who would also have been the interpreter. But it turned out that the guide could not make it, hence the resort to engage the services of motorcyclists as interpreters with the villagers.

The first port of call was Gomani where the journalists met some men under a tree, who they later understood to be missionaries in the villages. The missionaries took the journalists to a building, described as a church, where they had a chat with a 60- year-old man who identified himself as Moses, the pastor in charge of the church. He declared that he was posted to the village only recently and that he was yet to  know the practices of the people. He viewed the question as to whether twins were being sacrificed in the village with suspicion and declined to answer.

Infant mortality

Leaving Gomani, the journalists waded through the forest on motorbike until they arrived at a cluster of mud houses, signposting Tubudu village. The team's arrival interrupted some children playing games. One of the boys smartly greeted, “Good afternoon, sir”. Efforts to establish a rapport with the people through the boy was futile as their looks portrayed them as total strangers. When the journalists asked to meet with the village head and chiefs, they were told that they might have left for their farms.

Narrative continues:

Shrines: 

In a manner that tended to depict “it -is –our- culture- and- therefore -we- will- show it off”, the villagers built shrines that dotted everywhere. In every compound, there was a shrine strategically carved on the wall of a barn, simply announcing that twins had been sacrificed there.

Our enquiries produced one resident who claimed not to have been an indigene but had lived in the village for five years. He spoke Hausa and English Languages. The man subjected us to a barrage of questions trying to ascertain our identities and mission. By the time he became convinced, he agreed to talk to us on the condition of anonymity. He was one of the missionaries there on rescue mission. He said his mission was to fight infant mortality. When we shared our experience with him, he said, “If you are a stranger, they will not tell you that they kill twins in the village but if you live among them, they tell you. Bassa people kill twins.”

Taboo: 

The teams's source's story: “I work for Christian Missionary Foundation in the North Central of Nigeria., I am here because I was posted here and our aim is to reach out to the unreached in Abuja. I have been here for the past five years. My mission here is to stem infant mortality. In this village, they believe a woman is not supposed to give birth to more than a child; so they kill one of the children at birth if they are twins and leave the other because twins are a taboo to them.

They also kill single babies if, at the point of birth, the mother dies. Initially they were not giving us the children, but a woman with a strong heart for her children would come to us and say, ‘I cannot accept this, I don’t believe this child is a witch’. So, some of them bring the children to us. When a woman brings her child to you at the point of death, you won’t be able to say no. You see innocent child about to be killed, you won’t be able to say no. Some of them bring their children to us and say, ‘look they want to sacrifice these children’. We live among them.  “As they deliver twins, they don’t waste time to bring them to us because they imagine the evil that can befall them.  ”So how do they kill these children? They poison them. You will see a child is eating but terribly ill, they use spiritual means to poison the child. Sometimes the child dies instantly. It is a spiritual thing, you see a woman gives birth and within seconds the child dies.

”Few months ago, one incident here. There was a woman who had lost four children.  It turned out that it was her own brother who was the one bewitching her. Spiritual things are things you don’t see with naked eyes. The husband went to a herbalist to promise him that if the baby she was carrying didn’t die, he would give him something.  But when the woman gave birth the baby died within three hours.

Practice not strictly religious:

“The villagers are traditional worshippers, they worship the spirit of the dead, river and trees. Though we have Muslims and Christians among them, they still go back to their traditional practice. So,  it is like they practice their religions and hold their culture passionately.  And they initiate their children into it also; so, as the

older ones die, the younger ones continue.  So, what we do is to help the children.”

Asked if it is everybody in the community that practices traditional religion, the source said: “Some of them that are enlightened are against it and, even then when they are not enlightened, the women are against it. But what can they do?  The leadership and most of the people are involved. It is their culture and they hold it tenaciously.”

Rescue mission:

According to the source, some of the village women are excited about his foundation  rescuing the children. “They come around to see their children living fine. Some of the children have even started school. As they pass out of schol, they would be taken back to the villages to proclaim the gospel. Initially, people outside the villages were coming to us for adoption of these children but we refused, they have been saved to serve.  Initially some of the villagers were proud of the culture but when they discovered that it wasn’t good they tried to do away with it. Some of them have come to give their lives to God. Some of them are happy with us.“he added.

“But some of the village women are still ashamed to see the children, maybe because of their positions in the community. So, they don’t come to see the children;. even when they come in secret and tell you they want this baby to be rescued. Some of them might not be happy for rescuing the children. Because Basa people are proud people and they are proud of their culture but with the help of enlightenment and gospel, some of them want to do away with it.  About three years ago in Kutara, a woman gave birth to twins, both girls. They called me and I told them that if they poisoned the babies, the foundation would take them to court. So we left the village but I kept on monitoring the babies.  When I went back few weeks later, the girls were okay. The twin girls are doing

wonderfully well. If I hadn’t threatened them they would have poisoned the twins as they usually do in their culture.

Building a home

“The foundation has been rescuing children for the past 16 years ago. Initially we were not rescuing the children, because in the vision of the ministry, the mandate was not there. But when you see a problem and the Lord gives you solution then and life is involved and lives are being taken everyday, what do you do about it?  So, our Directors decided that these babies must be rescued. Right now it is one of our core focuses in this work.

In the home, we have about 42 children, some of them are twins. Five of the children were rescued from this village.  The oldest of the children is about 16 years and the youngest is months old.  Culture in these villages is not a tenable reason for getting rid of them.”

Government presence:

On government presence, the source said, “We  really don’t have government presence in the village. “There is a group, Greenfield Mission, that wanted to build primary school but they didn’t come on time. The local government came and built the school. I was teaching in the school. For teachers to come from Kwali is really difficult especially during raining season as the whole place is flooded,” he stated.

“There is no clinic around here.  There used to be one close to EYN but the building is bad. If there is any medical emergency the villagers are left on their own or they use traditional medicine and make sacrifices. But now there are two doctors that volunteered and come every Monday to administer drugs.”

Story Credit: Sunday Vanguard

Ngozi Nwosu returns!

Nollywood actress, Ngozi Nwosu, who left the country a few months ago to seek medical attention abroad, is back.

The actress returned on Tuesday after receiving treatment in an undisclosed hospital in the United Kingdom. She was flown abroad late last year, after she was diagnosed with an ailment believed to be a liver disease. Her condition had deteriorated so much that it ignited a debate among movie fans for a while.

At a point, the actress was forced to issue a public statement refuting reports that she had contracted the dreaded HIV/AIDS.

Nwosu’s publicist, Seun Oloketuyi, said on Thursday that she is due to return to the UK hospital after two months for a medical check.

“The medical check is routine. The important thing is that she has recovered fully from the illness,” he said.

How They Got Me Pregnant At Baby Factory..Victim Narrates!

Nine girls, forced into pregnancy at a ‘baby factory’ in Imo State ,yesterday spoke of how they became victims.

The nine were arrested by the police yesterday after initially escaping during a raid of the ‘baby factory’.

Their arrest brings to 26 the number of victims rescued from Ahamefula Motherless Babies Home, Umuaka in Njaba Ciouncil Area of the state.

They are aged between 14 and 25.

The visibly exhausted girls said that they were held against their wish by the proprietor of the so-called motherless babies home simply known as Madam One Thousand.

The victims are all from Imo .

They said their parents were unaware of their whereabouts.

According to them, they were taken to the ‘baby factory’ by scouts engaged by Madam One Thousand.

The scouts include women who go about seeking vulnerable girls.

17-year old Adaobi Akubueze ,until her abduction a student in Lagos, said she referred to the centre by a medical doctor who conducted a pregnancy test on her.

She said:“The result of the test was positive and the doctor said I should not abort the pregnancy. He said he knew where I could go and have the child with adequate maternal care and where the baby would be taken care of until I would be ready to take charge.

“So I ran away from home without informing my parents. But on getting to the centre in Imo State, I was asked to produce my letter of introduction. After that, my phone was taken away from me and that was how I stayed there till the Police came and arrested us.”

She said of conditions in the centre: “We were kept in a crowded room with little ventilation and a doctor came once in a while to check us. Nobody was allowed to go beyond the first gate also known as the Green Gate. And one boy who we referred to as oga came around to sleep with the girls, especially those that were not yet pregnant.

“The compound was built in such a way that made escape impossible. It is fenced with high walls and no visitor was allowed to come into the area where the girls were kept, except Madam, Oyibo and the doctor.

“After nine months, those who were due to be delivered were taken to another location and Madam would only bring back news to us that our friend had given birth. But they never came back ”.

Another victim, Chinyere Onwuegbu, also 17, said she was living with her mother, a widow, until she ran away with one of her friends who convinced her that she could make a huge amount of money if she could be pregnant and sell the child after delivery.

Her words: “My friend brought me here and she told me to stay and get pregnant. Madam promised to take good care of me and that she would give me N60,000 if I had a baby boy and N30,000 if it was a girl.

“ But after I was impregnated, Madam began to force me to work hard despite my condition. I cried everyday but no way to escape”.

From outside, the ‘baby factory’ looks very much like a pure water production facility.

It sits on an expansive land and is walled round.

The main building has several rooms secured with iron doors.

A neighbour, who volunteered information on condition of anonymity, said: “All we saw were people coming to buy water but we began to express worry when we noticed flashy cars coming to the place at nights.”

Investigation also revealed that the owner of the ‘baby factory’ also runs a maternity home where the victims are taken to be delivered of their babies.

Oyibo, who was identified by the girls as the one who impregnated most of them, denied that he was paid to impregnate them.

He said: “I was employed to work in the pure water company, but I have slept with most of the girls but not to impregnate them as reported.”

Who is Madam One Thousand?

It was gathered that Madam One Thousand is no stranger to the police having been arrested by them at least twice before for a similar offence.

A source, who asked not to be named, said: “If the police are serious, they can arrest her; they know her identity. She has been in this trade for a long time. She even has medical doctors who work for her.

“Apart from that, since she also runs a registered maternity home, why can’t the police look in that direction and get her identity from the Ministry of Health that registered her clinic?”

Sources said she is at the head of a syndicate that also includes doctors.

The doctors refer victims to her and get paid accordingly.

Efforts to get the Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Katsina, and the Police Public Relations Officer, Joy Elemoko, to comment on what becomes of the girls were unsuccessful as they did not pick calls to their handsets.

However, a reliable police source said the girls would be handed over to the Ministry of Women Affairs after proper documentation for adequate medical attention as some of them are ill.

Muma G's hot new shots!

Nigerian musician, Muma G's recently released photos shows she's not anything near throwing in the towel, especially after her marriage.........still gat it going!

Paparazzi Pics: Kate Henshaw Spotted With A Hunk At Shoprite Ikeja!

Nigeria:

one of Nollywood's best hands Kate Henshaw (divorced), spotted at a mall in Lagos with a hunk!





She looks happy, that's what matters most; go gurl!

Wike dares Amaechi to blow the whistle on his adversaries!

Nigeria:

The political crisis in Rivers State got messier on Thursday when the political leader of the new front of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, dared the state governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, to reveal the secrets of his adversaries as he has vowed.

Governor Amaechi had spoken during a visit on him by the Archbishop of the Niger Delta Diocese of the Anglican church saying he would uncover the secrets of those behind the political crisis at the right time.

Wike, who spoke on Thursday during the inauguration of committees by the new executive council of the PDP in the state, led by Felix Obuah, also advised the executive of the party to allow the new committees do their duties without interference.

Speaking on Governor Amaechi’s earlier statement, Wike reminded him that he was Chief of Staff of the Government House prior to his appointment as minister, saying he had access to documents of transactions of government.

“I heard some people are saying that they will talk and expose people fighting them, it is too late to expose people fighting them now. It is meaningless now.

I worked as a Chief Of Staff at Government House and the documents are there for them to see. Let them carry the documents and go through them and do what they like with them.

“The day they speak, I will speak too. It is not only one man that can speak. When you speak, others will also speak,” Wike threatened.

On the conduct expected of the chairman of the party in the state, Wike told Obuah not to exclude anybody from the good fortunes of the party, noting that the party is big enough to accommodate all.

He also corrected the impression that he is the leader of the party in the state, stating that the party’s constitution places the state governor at the head of the party in the state, as such, the leader of the party in Rivers is Amaechi.

Details of how Ombatse ‘cult’ group killed over 60 security officers in Nasarawa!

Security leaders in Abuja were late Thursday scratching their heads, trying to make sense of how a militia group in Nasarawa State, the Ombatse, that built a fierce loyalty through blood oaths, killed over 55 police officers and 10 operatives of the Directorate of State Security.

Part of the puzzle, knowledgeable sources told PREMIUM TIMES, was how the security officers were lured into a cruel ambush, dispossessed of their weapons, brutally murdered, and then burnt into cold ash.

“It is the most cold blooded act I have witnessed against the law enforcement community in my three decades in the force” a senior police officer in Lafia, capital of Nasarawa State, told PREMIUM TIMES struggling to conceal bitter groans.

Other puzzles include who authorized the ill-fated operation in the first place, both at the police end, and at the Directorate of State Security end, which cost both institutions of the team leaders of the operation.

Deputy Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mbah, describing the event as an act of impunity in Abuja on Thursday, adds that “enough is enough,’’ promising also that the police will track down the killers, which robbed the institution of its operational chief in the state, Mohammed Momoh, an Assistant Commissioner of police who hails from Kogi State.

Force headquarters also repudiated earlier claims Thursday that the Nasarawa State Police Commissioner, Abayomi Akeremale, due for retirement at the end of the month, had been placed on suspension, and that the operational coordination of the crisis had been handed over to a deputy Inspector General of police from Abuja.

The DSS, on its part, would not confirm its casualty to PREMIUM TIMES; merely saying it had deployed a search and rescue team to determine fatalities of its operatives on the assignment.

However, sources in Lafia disclosed that the Nasarawa state director of the Service has been recalled to Abuja and placed under “some preliminary punitive sanction while full investigations is apace,” evidence, according to the sources, that he might have over-reached his powers in ordering such a high level operation without the mandatory clearance and approval from Abuja.

Eight operatives and two drivers of the agency were reportedly killed in the operation, including the team leader, a mid career officer, thought to have been “obviously saddled with an assignment beyond his pay grade.”

PREMIUM TIMES also gathered that the local army unit declined to join on the Tuesday mission citing the need for higher authorization. Police and security sources in Lafia have so far been mute on civilian casualties, but the broader narrative of the Nasarawa tragedy, late Tuesday, pointed more on the role of the Nasarawa state administration, its desire to calm rising political temperature in the state, the fear that the Eggon militias bore the marks of a nascent terror movement, and the pressure it put on the security forces to initiate the Tuesday raid.

Security sources said the state administration triggered the initial petition to the DSS and the police on the presumed nefarious role of the militia.

Based on the security report from the DSS, PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the police proceeded to build an armada of 13-truck load of men late Tuesday on a mission to Asakio village to disrupt a planned oath ceremony of the group, destroy the shrine, which houses the shrine of Ombatse cult, a deity of the Eggon people, and to arrest its spiritual leader.

Police sources and officials in the state administration, in Lafia, who sought anonymity told PREMIUM TIMES that just ten kilometers out of Lafia, what set out as a clandestine operation came upon an ambush, well laid out by the Eggon attackers, who took on the security convoy ultimately turning their mission into a monstrous killing field.

“This was planned as a clandestine operation for which resources in men and materials were mobilized from different units of the Lafia command, and for which almost none of the men in the convoy knew their destination. Now how it all ended so terribly, that the cultists would anticipate and wreck this kind of attack on security people speak volumes of either infiltration or mission betrayal” a distraught police officer told PREMIUM TIMES in Lafia.

Mission of the police

Yet the Eggon crisis that led to this tragedy was not a new phenomenon. The militia forces attacked Agyaragu community in December last year, which led to the death of ten persons of Koro extraction including a traditional ruler.

That attack led to the banning of the group by the government of Nassarawa State in an official gazette. Also last year, soldiers reportedly stormed the shrine in the group’s ancestral home in Nassarawa-Eggon local government and dispersed them, forcing the cult’s leader and some of his members to migrate to Asakio.

But while at Asakio, the group soon began having difficult relationship with the dominant Arago tribe leading to skirmishes and perennial loss of lives.

Some residents of Lafia who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES painted the picture of a powerful group that has members in many establishments in the state, and which built a tight loyal core through an oath administered on members at the Ombatse shrine, called “the Mbase.” The oath, observers of the group claimed, was always the prism through which members sought to read presumed injustice in political power, and sought to restructure the political and power landscape in Nasarawa State.

Persons who took the Ombatse oath, and swore to its loyalty pledge, were therefore assured of presumed “invisibility to bullets,” PREMIUM TIMES learnt. Tuesday’s raid was an attempt by the state government, using the security agencies to break the nerve of the group.

According to Eggon News, a local newspaper, the Ombatse, which means ‘time has come,’ was founded by six people. They include Alaku Ehe, Zabura Musa Akwanshiki, Shuaibu Alkali, Hassan Musa Zico Kigbu, Iliyasu Hassan Gyabo and Abdullahi Usman.

Mr. Zico was quoted in a chat with Eggon News as saying the group was born from a revelation through a dream where their ancestors directed them to “rise up and cleanse the land of societal ills such as adultery, fornication, drunkenness, theft, and killings.”

Sources in Lafia informed PREMIUM TIMES that politics may be behind the oath of secrecy, initiation and violence by the group. They said the Eggon people are primarily based in Nassarawa-Eggon and Akwanga Local Governments, but added that “they are spread in almost all parts of the state”.

They also said despite their numbers and perceived influence, the Eggon have not been able to produce the governor.

“The Ombatse therefore, pledged that come 2015 they will not be kingmakers, but must produce the king themselves.” said Salisu, a resident of Lafia.

Throwing more light, Mr. Salisu said the group felt that they were unable to produce the governor because they are not united and are always fighting each other, hence, he said, “I am not surprised they are taking an oath this time around.”

To buttress his point Mr. Salisu said “Look at Labaran Maku (Information Minister) and (Solomon) Ewuga (a senator), they are both Eggons, very influential, but hardly see eye to eye politically.”