Shrines set ablaze as LG chair warns native doctors over initiation of youths in Akwa Ibom

The Chairman of Oruk Anam Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Mr Kingsley Frank, has frowned at the diabolic activities of some native doctors in his domain, noting that the future of several youths have been destroyed through indoctrination and initiation into cultism. Frank, who led security operatives and some angry youths to a forest in Ikot Oku Ibiet village in Oruk Anam Ward 3, where the shrines were set ablaze and some youths arrested in the process of being fortified with charms for criminal activities, said such illegalities would no longer be allowed to thrive under his watch. “The future of the youths as leaders of tomorrow should not be allowed to be wasted through cultism. And, by this, we are sending a warning to native doctors in the habits of fortifying these youths with charms to take to crimes to desist or be made to face the law”, he warned. Several suspects were arrested for kidnapping, murder and armed robbery in the area including a blind 70-year-old woman with a human skull, who claimed her late husband was a native doctor. Worried by widespread cases of crimes in the state, Governor Udom Emmanuel, who visited the area last weekend, blamed the abandonment of road works in the Local Government on cases of kidnapping, killing of construction workers and security agencies. Emmanuel, whose wife hails from the area, had sued for peace to enable the construction work to resume with the setting in of the dry season, lamenting that no fewer than four different contractors had been hired to work on the sites because of insecurity. “When we brought contractors here to work on these roads, my in-laws were the first to kidnap the contractors; they even killed some army officers”, he recalled. However, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Superintendent Odiko Macdon, who paraded the suspects at the Police command headquarters at Ikot Akpanabia, near Uyo, the state capital, expressed the Police Commissioner Amiengheme Andrew’s zero-tolerance for any form of crime. He, therefore, assured that the suspects would be prosecuted at the conclusion of investigations into the various cases, adding that those found guilty would be made to face any degree of penalty fit for their crimes. (Nigerian Tribune)