![]() A child in the village without proper nutrition fits perfectly into that picture,” she said. Politicians’ children are not malnourished, so they don’t fit into the picture of a witch. ![]() “Witches are supposed to look like children who are malnourished. “In Akwa Ibom, people watch a lot of Nollywood movies that tend to paint a picture of witches, and those pictures formed our perception generally – witches are supposed to look like old women, maybe, with bad teeth, going by pictures from Nollywood. “I think society is defined by the level of exposure of its members. “It’s a very dicey one because the parents or guardians who take these children to the pastors would hardly give information that could incriminate these pastors or prophets. “I have never come across a story where a son or a daughter of one big politician is labelled a witch,” she added.Ī participant, Ms Akpan, said it could be difficult to bring to justice, pastors who tell parents that their children are witches. “And someone would just give a hint – have you looked at this child? And then the next thing, the child is thrown out from the home, as we have heard and read in the past,” Mrs Ekong said, in her contribution at the roundtable. “People have linked such (witchcraft) accusation to poverty, and it is usually in households where they are going through some tough phases – either the father is having hard luck, maybe he just lost a job, the mother is barely struggling to manage the little that is available – and suddenly this child that is obviously malnourished becomes the focus of attention. The participants talked on obstacles against child development in Nigeria, such as child labour, lack of education, labelling of children as witches, lack of mentoring, and poor implementation of child rights law. Other participants at the roundtable were Uduak Ekong, the chairperson of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) in Akwa Ibom, and Imaobong Akpan, a blogger. ![]() “This thing is a cycle, a teen mom will probably have her own female child take after her and also get pregnant the same way,” she said. It’s like, look I have more money than you. I make you feel like you are no more in my class, I now have a kid, so I have many responsibilities. “In Obio Akpa, a developing community where you have a campus of the Akwa Ibom State University, young girls make it a competition to get pregnant – if I am your friend and I get pregnant, you are no more in my clique. Others are just regular men on the streets. Most of the men who get these girls pregnant are the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members who probably leave the area after their service year. Most of them don’t even know how to locate those who got them pregnant,” she said. “The challenge we have is that most times before these girls come in, it is already too late. But some girls, especially in the country’s poor rural communities, lack the money to buy them, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. Some brand of sanitary pad could go for as low as N250 in Nigeria. “She is getting to 17, she was 15 when she got pregnant.” “There’s another (teenager) who slept with a man because of sweet and got pregnant!” she said. Ms Udo attributed the girls’ predicament to poverty. “We have two of our teen mothers, between the age of 16 and 19, who got pregnant because they could not afford sanitary pad, so they slept with men who promised to buy them the pad,” Sifon Udo, who runs an NGO, Smartsmothers Foundation, said at the roundtable. And the teenagers are said to be from poor families.Ī campaigner against teenage pregnancy revealed this at a roundtable on child development hosted by PREMIUM TIMES in Uyo to mark the 2019 Children’s Day. The incident happened in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria’s South-South, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. Two Nigerian teenagers reportedly became pregnant for men whom they had sex with just so they could buy sanitary pad for them.
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