Akwa Ibom Govt. React To Story On Child Witches

Dear Sir,

It is unfortunate that the writer is ascribing the action of perhaps one person or a few persons to an entire state and hiding under that cover to launch an attack on the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Chief Godswill Akpabio.

Or how else do I describe a report on the so-called child witch syndrome dove-tailing into such spurious remarks that the Governor will leave Akwa Ibom State poorer than hour met it. Haba!

And you know in good conscience that this cannot be true of the Governor who just last December was voted overwhelmingly in an opinion poll conducted by you on Facebook as the best performing Governor in Nigeria.

But for your information, it was in a bid to fight this ignorance of child witch syndrome, that Governor Akpabio declared free and compulsory education up to Senior Secondary School for all Nigerian children resident in Akwa Ibom State.

It may also interest you to know that Akwa Ibom State under Governor Akpabio was the First to sign the child right bill into law. Under the act, it is a criminal offence for a child of school-going age to be seen on the street during school hours. Such children are often apprehended and their parents/guardian sought after.

It is even a criminal offence to label any child in Akwa Ibom as a witch! The State Government has also established a special centre to take care of children who were hitherto labelled witches or abandoned by their parents/guardians.

I challenge the writer of this story or the so-called Social Worker to report this matter to law enforcement agencies in the state. So where is all these coming from?

But we know that many fly-in-the-night NGO's have sought to justify the funding they receive from foreign organizations by posting spurious stories and photographs especially in the on-line media where anything goes.

I'd advice you do your due diligence when you receive reports like this so that you don't play into the hands of fund-seeking NGO's who brandish spurious photographs to sustain their scam.

Anietie Ekong,

SA (Media) to the

Governor of Akwa Ibom State