Activist Leo Igwe is at the vanguard of efforts to aid crowd accused of spell in Nigeria, as it could possibly wreck their lives – or even supremacy to them being lynched.

“I could no longer take it. You know, just staying around and seeing people being killed randomly,” Dr Igwe tells the BBC.

Nearest finishing his doctorate in spiritual research in 2017 he was once stressed. He had written broadly about spell and was once annoyed that academia didn’t permit him to problem the apply head on.

The BBC has clear proof of Pentecostal pastors in Nigeria maintaining services and products focused on alleged witches, a tradition Dr Igwe says isn’t ordinary in a rustic the place many crowd imagine within the supernatural.

Blackmail: This newsletter comprises main points some readers would possibly in finding demanding.

So Dr Igwe arrange Advocacy For Alleged Witches, an organisation focussed on “using compassion, reason, and science to save lives of those affected by superstition”.

Dr Igwe’s prevention paintings additionally extends to Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe and past.

One of the most crowd the organisation has helped in Nigeria is 33-year-old Jude. In August, it intervened when he was once accused and overwhelmed in Benue Condition.

Jude, a glazier, who additionally works part-time in a locker, says he was once on his strategy to paintings one morning, when he met a boy sporting two weighty jars of aqua which brought on him to remark at the boy’s bodily agility.

The boy didn’t speed the feedback kindly, however he went on his manner.

Upcoming, Jude was once adopted via a mob of about 15 crowd throwing stones at him. Between the two of them was once the boy he had greeted previous.

“Young men started fighting me as well, trying to set me ablaze,” Jude says.

He was once accused of inflicting the disappearance of the boy’s penis thru spell, an accusation that stunned him and is unfaithful.

Claims of manhood disappearances aren’t unusual in some portions of West Africa.

This is a declare that has been related to Koro syndrome, a psychological disease another way referred to as lacking or genital retraction hysteria.

This is a psychiatric problem characterized via an intense and irrational worry of the genital organs going lacking or retracting into the frame of the sufferer.

Dr Igwe says Jude misplaced his process on the locker as a result of the stigma atmosphere the accusation.

A video of the violent witch-hunting altercation additionally started to flow into on Fb, which is when Dr Igwe and his staff spotted and started to analyze.

“They brought him [Jude] out naked, you know, brutalised,” Dr Igwe says. “We first of all localise it – where is this taking place?”

On WhatsApp, Dr Igwe is one thing of an influencer.

Over the utmost few years he has constructed and curated WhatsApp teams for various Nigerian states.

Those teams are stuffed with dozens of involved electorate who he dubs “advocates”. They proportion viral witch-accusation movies and footage and attempt to intrude when an allegation is being made on their area.

“We reached out to him [Jude]. We sent him some money to take care of his wounds. We socially rehabilitate him,” Dr Igwe says.

Advocacy for Alleged Witches additionally wrote to the locker to attempt to block Jude from getting the sack, even if they didn’t pay attention anything else again, he says.

The gang has additionally dedicated to paying Jude’s college charges, which it hopes can handover him with a untouched get started.

Many in Africa’s most-populous nation imagine in, and reside in worry of, witches and the diabolical powers they supposedly manipulate.

Monetary issues, sicknesses or infertility are regularly blamed on spell.

The ones accused are regularly prone. Lots of the month they’re both very younger or very aged, on occasion they have got psychological or bodily disabilities and regularly they reside in poverty.

In keeping with Nigeria Keep watch, a website online that displays violence within the nation by means of media reviews, there were 8 deaths at once stemming from spell accusations in 2024.

The BBC has no longer independently verified those figures, however has up to now reported on attacks and murders of crowd accused of spell in Nigeria and past.

“Belief in witchcraft or [the] supernatural in Nigeria is cultural,” says Dr Olaleye Kayode, a senior schoolmaster in African Indigenous Religions on the College of Ibadan.

“The belief is that witches are one of the supernatural beings created by God to stir the affairs of the Earth,” he provides, hour pointing out that it’s lack of information that makes crowd advertise witch-hunting.

He blames witch-hunting in Nigeria totally on preaching from “foreign religions” similar to Christianity and Islam, however recognizes conventional religions additionally “wage war” on witches.

Dr Igwe says that one of the most nation’s many influential Christian Pentecostal pastors support superstitions about spell, and the view that “any alleged witch is dangerous to the society, deserves no mercy and should be killed”.

Age a few of these church occasions are advertised as deliverance services and products, in August one in all them was once marketed with the theme “That Witch Must Die”.

The church at the back of the development trailed it broadly to its 20,000 fans on social media.

When Dr Igwe noticed a billboard in Imo atmosphere promoting it, he wrote a number of petitions to the native government, in addition to quite a lot of articles for native media, looking to get it forbidden.

It went forward anyway – Advocacy For Alleged Witches despatched eyewitnesses and continues to foyer in opposition to matching occasions.

The church accountable has no longer replied to the BBC’s request for remark.

Incorrect-one was once killed on the Imo atmosphere tournament, however the “witch-must-die” rhetoric coming from church buildings can supremacy to hatred and violence, Dr Igwe says.

And lots of Nigerian church buildings are in opposition to such attitudes.

“Casting out demons and not killing those that are possessed of demons was what we know Jesus’ ministry for,” says Julius Osimen, a senior pastor on the International Electorate Church in Lagos.

Mr Osimen describes any preaching encouraging witch-hunting as a misinterpretation of Bible verses.

“When Jesus came, he came with better understanding. You don’t kill people that are possessed or oppressed of demons, you simply cast the demons out,” he says.

Dr Igwe’s paintings has include a private price. He says he has been overwhelmed up 3 times for intervening to the behalf of the ones accused of being witches and recognizes his spouse and kids have expressed issues for his protection.

However the activist says not anything will assemble him chorus or forbid him from intervening: “My realisation is that I have to step forward and try to provide leadership.”

In Nigeria, it’s an offence to accuse, or threaten to accuse, somebody of being a witch or having the ability of spell.

It carries a most two-year jail sentence. Alternatively, prosecutions and convictions are uncommon.

In 2021 the UN Human Rights Council handed a answer condemning human rights violations related to spell, but such allegations proceed to persist throughout a lot of Africa, in addition to additional afield together with in Republic of India and Papua Unutilized Guinea.

“Trying to end witch-hunting is a challenge and we should not romanticise it in any way by trying to say: ‘Oh, it’s part of our culture,’” Dr Igwe says.

“It’s not part of our culture to kill our parents. It’s not part of our culture killing innocent people.”