Accused Of Being A Witch In Nigeria

As the testimony continues, Bishop is accused of haunting various men at night as they slept, killing a child, and bewitching animals. Adding to this evidence, a group of jury women testify having found a “preternatural teat”, or an abnormal extra nipple, but having checked again, it had disappeared. All this made this one of the most memorable witch trial that happened in Salem. Bishop was later convicted and hanged.

Imagine going over to grandma’s house to be the company of a crazy witch lady who constantly tortures you. This was the life for a poor seven-year-old child who was cursed with an evil grandmother. In the article, “Grandma Gets Life for Dressing as Witch to ‘Torture’ 7-year-old”, 51-year-old Geneva Robinson pleaded guilty to five counts of felony child abuse (Harthorne, 2017). Her boyfriend was also involved with the case as he was helping her commit the acts They ae the most evil type people of humankind. How can someone terrorize children let alone their own family!

In the Daycare Abuse Trials and the Witchcraft Trials people were swayed to believe the children’s feasible claims, but ignore any inconsistence within their stories. In the Daycare Abuse Trials “children as young as 2 and 3 years old have come forward with harrowing tales of drinking blood, animal sacrifices and sexual abuse as part of ritual” (Lempinen). Even though the claimed behaviors

Witchdoctors also known as african folk healers were traced back from time of slavery. The name witchdoctors gives a bad representation of them even though they are very wise and knowledgeable. Witchdoctors are great outlets and sources to to their communities. Everything that was known from past generations would be passed down to the newest generation. Looking at the history of witchdoctors it is apparent that many can be found dispersed throughout Africa along with their different cultures, beliefs, and treatments. All of these aspects can be seen in the book “No Witchcraft for Sale”

The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events, by Evans-Pritchard examines how the Azande people viewed witchcraft as an explanation for the unknown in unfortunate events. Witchcraft was used to explain how usual everyday events would sometimes lead to an unforeseen outcome. For example, when you happen to fall down the stairs even though you have walked on those same set of stairs multiple times without falling. The notion of witchcraft sheds light on what the Azande people focus on when it comes to unfortunate events. They understand how you fell on the stairs, but they are more concerned with understanding why it happened.

Witchcraft is where people believed that others were practicing the use magical powers or their beliefs. In Europe, witchcraft was used for controlling the people in the community who did not agree with expectations

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the common usages of sorcery and witchcraft among peoples of the world along with a brief overview of the cognitive and sociological theories used to explain the prevalence of sorcery and witchcraft. This paper will also evaluate, and explain Madumo’s situation by using Peoples and Bailey’s Humanity along with Ashforth’s Madumo, a Man Bewitched and discussing their relationships with Madumo, his problems, and the ideas of sorcery and witchcraft and the role that they play in Madumo’s culture and life.

They call people “Devil slaves” when they aren't a slave to anyone. When word gets around,that there is a witch in that town that person is brutally hurt, mentally and physically. They say they can get the devil out of you, but no matter what, you'll end up dying. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller portrays the Salem witch trials and how people were being accused falsely; likewise, kids in Nigeria are being accused of being witches due to hatred and religious reasons.

Unlike the first reading, I found this to be a much more accurate and enlightening recount of Voodoo as it is stated in the paper “in many ways, the study of witchcraft is really the study of the whole of a culture.” What made this piece a better read was the real life depiction of witchcraft in Benin and a relatively unbiased approach, where the first two works by Forbes and St. John were littered with racist overtones and over exaggeration. The background information about how àzě and bǒ were different was fascinating, especially in relation to social structures and gender roles. However, the thing that I found to be the most intriguing were the descriptions of bǒ recipes. I was surprised how simple and logical these recipes were, in a non-conventional

In the 16th century, witchcraft became popular because people believed it had a better explanation of unexpected unfortunate events, rather than the working of God’s will (“Witchcraft”). It is practiced by both men and women, but mostly stereotyped to only women. A typical witch was described as being

Our political views have been affected in “The Persecution of the Witches”. The United Nations Office of High Commissioner for human rights reported that the most of 25,000-50,000 were abandoned due to accusations. One of Nigeria’s most popular Pentecostal preachers, Helen Ukpabio, wrote that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan”. Kids were abandoned due to the fact that they cried at specific times during the night. This is considered to be pure evil. As the Bible has written, newborns are the purest kind of all human beings . Even in all literacy modes, babies are symbolized for innocence, new life, and happiness. The kids did not know anything about good or evil. Even then,

Witchcraft was a crime no one should want to be charged with. It was something people were afraid of, it was heinous, it was truly evil. In most communities, it was one of the worst crimes you could ever be accused of. Many countries no longer consider witchcraft to be a crime, although some countries such as Saudi Arabia and Uganda still consider it a serious offense even to this day. The focus of this piece, however, is to discuss how countries like England and Sweden handled witch trial cases, how that may have influenced the townspeople of Salem, and how some Salem trials worked.

The chapter “The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events” describes how Evans-Pritchard observed and analysed the world of witchcraft among the Azande tribe in Sudan. With his fieldwork in 1937 he wanted to look at how they used spirits, oracles, magic and witchcraft to explain unfortunate events and how they connected death these events to witchcraft (Eriksen, 2010, p.242). In the first part of this chapter Evans-Pritchard writes how witchcraft plays an important role in everyday life among the Zande. He highlights that witchcraft is the root to any failure and misfortune.

The early modern period in Europe was marked by the hunting and trial of those believed to be witches. Witches were defined as those who used magic (both benevolent and malevolent). However, witches in these trials were often accused of maleficium. Maleficium is a type of sorcery meant to hurt other and where the user has made a pact with the devil. Having made a pact with the Devil, these witches would gather to perform a series of rituals involving naked dancing, cannibalism, and the murder of children (Levack, 2006). Those who worshiped the devil were considered “worse than a pagan and a heretic” (Institoris, Sprenger, Mackay, 2006). These accusations sound both bizarre and impossible. So why did so many Europeans believe in witchcraft and fear it enough to put at least 45,000 people to death? The fact of the matter is that there was no singular cause, but a multitude of causes.

The economic failure in Nigeria has brought about child abuse and neglect coupled with prostitution and child trafficking.