A father who tortured his own son to death together with his new wife has justified his actions by saying the child was a wizard.
A man identified as Zikeme Ideisy, as well as his wife, Eunice, has been arrested by the Bayelsa State Police Command for torturing his seven-year-old son, Joseph, to death over allegations of witchcraft.
South-South News reports that Ideisy and Eunice who was the young victim’s stepmother, brutalized the boy at their home in Yenagoa, the state capital and by the time he was rushed to the Children Emergency Ward of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Yenagoa, on Sunday, January 15, 2017, he was already dead.
The victim was said to have sustained multiple injuries all over his body following what the police describe as routine torture.
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The hospital management was said to have reported the case at the Azikoro Police Division, Yenagoa, leading to the arrest of the two suspects.
A family source narrated that Ideisy and Eunice had taken Joshua from his grandmother, whom he had been living with since he was a baby with the couple accusing him of being a wizard and the one responsible for their woes in life.
The source said:
“The boy was living with his grandmother before the man brought him to live with them. That was in November 2016.
When they brought the child home, he didn’t have any torture mark. It was within a few weeks that the boy stayed with them that the incident happened.
He was beaten to death by the two of them over an allegation that he was into witchcraft.”
The Public Relations Officer of the FMC, Ben Akpedi, confirmed that the child was brought in dead to the hospital, adding that efforts made the hospital management to make the suspects talk were abortive, as they continued to be evasive.
“The boy’s father and a lady, who claimed to be the stepmother, brought him to the hospital on Sunday. On a close examination, our doctors found out that the child had passed on.
There were a lot of bruises on him. We decided to conduct quick investigation and ask them some questions. But somehow, their answers were phony.
When we asked where they brought the child from, they said they came from across the bridge. We asked for their house address, they were not specific. We asked for a telephone number, but the number they gave us didn’t go through.
In their statements, they didn’t say they were the ones that tortured the boy. We decided not to go further. We invited the security agents so that whatever might have happened to the child could be ascertained.
The unfortunate thing is that the couple appeared to be young. Both of them are now with the police at the Azikoro division.”
A human rights activist and Executive Director of Project Alert, Josephine Effah-Chukwuma, has condemned the killing of the young boy, adding that the torture and death of the victim was due to the failure of society.
“This is nothing but a communal failure. Some of the scars on the victim’s body are old, meaning this had been ongoing for some time without anybody raising the alarm. It is a big shame on us that a child in a community can be treated that way.
There is no way that boy was beaten and killed in one day. He died gradually. He must have cried out and called for help, yet nobody came to his rescue. Nobody did anything. We all failed that child.”
The State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), ASP Butswat Asinim who confirmed the incident, said investigations were ongoing.
“We have a report about a seven-year-old boy that was admitted for injuries inflicted by his stepmother.
He later died from the injuries. The stepmother and father have been arrested for their roles. The mother of the child has also shown up and they are all with the police.”
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ASP Asimin added that the suspects would be charged to court after the conclusion of investigations and if found guilty, would be made to face the full wrath of the law.
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