We've exported our brand of 'Christian Crazy' to Africa. We do NOT need their brand exported here.
Female apostle. Right. She's someone's apostle, but it wouldn't be Christ's.....
Nigerian Witch-Hunter Helen Ukpabio Claims Death threats against her Life after she is responsible for the Deaths of thousands of innoncent people Cancels Visit To US
☥☽✪☾DAW ☽✪☾
2012/05/01 13:41:34
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HOUSTON — At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known.
So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks. Her culpability is a central contention of “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” a documentary that will make its American debut Wednesday on HBO2.
Those disturbed by the needless immiseration of innocent children should beware. “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” follows Gary Foxcroft, founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.
Their fellow villagers have often seen DVDs of “End of the Wicked,” Ms. Ukpabio’s bloody 1999 movie purporting to show how the devil captures children’s souls. And some have read her book “Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft,” where she confidently writes that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.”
Visiting Houston last week to lead a four-night revival for a local church, Ms. Ukpabio, 41, had no idea that “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” which brought protesters out to greet her in London, was about to be shown in the United States. But she was eager to defend herself.
“Do you think Harry Potter is real?” Ms. Ukpabio asked me angrily, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express where she was staying. “It is only because I am African,” she said, that people who understand that J. K. Rowling writes fiction would take literally Ms. Ukpabio’s filmic depictions of possessed children, gathering by moonlight to devour human flesh.
Still, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” makes clear that many rural Nigerians do take her film seriously. And in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs.
In Nigeria, many preachers not only identify possessed children but charge dearly to perform exorcisms. To redeem their children’s souls — and to keep the child from being killed or banished by neighbors — parents scrimp or borrow to pay the preacher.
The President and founder of the Liberty Gospel Foundation Church, Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio says she has indefinitely cancelled her scheduled visits to the USA which where billed for March and May this year.
Speaking through her attorney, Victor Ukutt, Esq., the Pentecostal Pastor and Nollywood actress, who has her church branches spread all over Africa, said her decision to cancel her trip was based on the series of death threats she received from organisations like Stepping Stones Nigeria based in the United Kingdom which claimed to work as a charity to protect witch children in Nigeria.
“The woman of God has received written threats to life by several organisations and persons on behalf of Stepping Stones Nigeria. Such threats are very serious that they even say as soon as she sets foot on the US soil she will be killed; so we cannot take such as mere threat when people determine to make money fraudulently in the internet and be violent because of one’s belief.” Mr Ukutt said.
The Nigerian lawyer questioned what such money will be used for now that Mrs Ukpabio has cancelled her US trip, if not for personal use.
The Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network, a school for abandoned children run by Sam Itauma and featured in Mr. Foxcroft’s documentary, is “a 419 scam,” Ms. Ukpabio said, referring to the section in Nigeria’s criminal code that deals with fraud.
She said the children’s gruesome scars and wounds, shown in the documentary, are not real — or perhaps they are real, “but there are many ways children can get maimed.” And if the injuries are the result of witchcraft accusations against the children, she said, those accusations could not have been made by Pentecostal Christian preachers, but by charlatans.
Since “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” was first shown in Britain, in 2008, Mr. Itauma’s home state has adopted a law against accusing children of witchcraft. But Ms. Ukpabio went on the offensive by suing the state government, Mr. Foxcroft, Mr. Itauma and Leo Igwe, a Nigerian antisuperstition activist.
In the lawsuit, Ms. Ukpabio alleges that the state law infringes on her freedom of religion. She seeks 2 billion naira (about $13 million) in damages, as well as “an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents” from interfering with or otherwise denouncing her church’s “right to practice their religion and the Christian religious belief in the existence of God, Jesus Christ, Satan, sin, witchcraft, heaven and hellfire.”
In other words, in the name of religious freedom, Ms. Ukpabio seeks a gag order on anyone who disagrees with her.
The lawsuit also reiterates Ms. Ukpabio’s contention that Stepping Stones Nigeria and Mr. Itauma’s school are not charities but extortionate front organizations. According to Ms. Ukpabio, Mr. Foxcroft and Mr. Itauma aim not to educate abandoned children but “to use the said funds to blackmail.”
Read More: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11990019...
Top Opinion
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bags the Indigenous Guru 2012/07/27 16:12:31
This woman's the one that's possessed.
in England 2 Adults killed a 15 year old child that they thought was a Witch because he liked the movie harry potter
Female apostle. Right. She's someone's apostle, but it wouldn't be Christ's.....
This woman should be held accountable for the misery she has caused to others.
http://newafricanmagazine.com...