It can be frustrating to watch yet another sea of African children being used as window dressing for some other charity drive to guilt-trip the public into diving into their pockets. However last night’s Channel 4’s Dispatches was troubling viewing even for the hardened second generation African immigrant like myself.
Return to Africa’s Witch Children was intriguing follow up to the BAFTA and multi-award winning Saving Africa’s Witch Children. The first programme was harrowing and powerful, it instigated a deluge of international outrage towards the treatment of vulnerable children in Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom State. So much so that the State Government was duly embarrassed into bringing forth a Child Rights Act, which enshrined children’s right to education and criminalising the practice of stigmatising children as a witch. This state law however was 5 years overdue, under the then President Olusegun Obasanjo the federal government in conjunction with UNICEF had passed the Child’s Rights Act 2003 and by 2007 only 15 of Nigeria’s 36 State governments had enacted the Federal law.
