Africa! Stop Lynching Your Old Women!!

The shouts of people rented into the air. I can hear several people screaming on top of their voice. Youths were wielding their long whips, big sticks and glittering well - sharpened machetes. The noises increased. I heard the sound of whips hitting flesh and painful cries rented the air.. These are not cries of kids of youth but that of old men and women. Cries from them as youth meted out wicked treatment on them. This is heartbreaking! Different talisman, clothes and different kinds of relics were brought out of their houses and burnt while they watch with pains and lashes of whips hit them on every part of their body. I'm sure you're eager to know their offence. What's their offence? They were accused of being witches and wizards. The proof? They were traditional worshippers. What absurdity!

I can see many of these youth with pictures of their pastors and Jesus hanging around their neck. Many of them have images and statues of Mary in their respective homes. Then why are old men accused of being evil because they keep a relic of their own belief, yet you have yours on your neck. This heartbreaking incident happened before my very eyes. Old men and women were accused of being evil, their homes invaded, dragged out into the cold, beaten and disgraced with no tangible evidence to support the accusations but mere speculations and effects of phobia for flimsy superstitious suspicion. No one wants to have the evidence of their crimes, no human parts were found on them, no bones, no skull, no guns.... Just the relics of their beliefs and that makes them evil.

This incident is just one in a thousand taking place all over Africa, not just my country have I seen such mediocrity but the whole is Africa is neck deep on this imbecility. Africa! We need to grow out of these superstitious beliefs. We need to stop being scared of imaginary enemies. We need to outgrown killing, maiming and lynching innocent old men and women and even little kids just because we tag them as witches and ogbanje (spirit children). We need to stop taking little sickness to be demonic attacks. We need to outgrow the belief that an owl's cry at night means that witches are around. We need to stop terming convulsions as being possessed by demons. We need to stop pointing at rats and cockroaches crawling round the house as witches. Africans simply needs to outgrow baseless superstitions that are products of their own fears and in secured mind. the effects such superstitions have on many minds is disturbing, the rate by which violence is being meted out on unsuspecting souls because of unsure assumptions from a fearful mind is frightening.

When are we going to outgrow the fear of the unknown? When will pastors and imams stop sinking Africans deeper into these superstitious fears of the ancestral spirits? When are we going to stop falling prey for con men in suit who disguise as pastors? When? When are we going to realize that we can't change the economy by praying alone. God doesn't build a country, men do. If wishes work, we'll be richer than Bill gates by now. If we really want to grow like the developed countries then we need to firstly develop our psychology and ideology. This means that we have to bury all these primitive superstition and leave the idiocy state superstition have brought us into.

image source