By Ogar Monday
A team of volunteers from Project Alert, Basic Rights Counsel Initiative, BRCI, and the Cross River State chapter of Child Protection Network (CPN) has rescued a 6-year-old girl (name withheld) branded a witch by her father, a Police officer. She was locked up in a store in Okurikang, Odukpani Local Government Area for weeks.
The team who were in Odukpani for a town hall meeting on the VAPP and DRL, had gotten information about the child and stormed where the child was locked-up after some neighbors raised an alarm that the child had been left there for weeks by her father, Sergeant Echeng Ezeoke of Police Mobile Force (PMF) 11.
Neighbors say he arrives every evening to give her doses of beating and rains accusations on her of being a witch, this allegation, the accused denies.
Kebe Ikpi, the Cross River State Coordinator of Child Protection Network (CPN) while addressing the press said that the rescue was carried out after “worried neighbors said they have been hearing the child crying for days. The father, who is a Police officer, lives in another compound with another woman and just left the child here.”
Kebe added that the issue will be followed up appropriately, saying, “the child has an injury on her head that we suspect is a machete cut. This is not something that should be happening anywhere, nonetheless, from a Police officer.”
Also, Apostle Leonard Ekpenyong, the Odukpani chapter of CPN Coordinator said with the cooperation of communities, all harmful practices against children can be eliminated, encouraging people not to condone any form of abuse.
The suspect is said to have been handed over to the Odukpani Police Division, while the child has been placed at a children’s shelter.
The rescue, treatment of the child, and shelter is supported by Project Alert and Basic Rights Counsel Initiative.
This report was updated.