Gary Foxcroft
He talks to Olivia Edward about the causes and solutions to the widespread belief in witchcraft in the region.
I’ve always been interested in social justice and environmental issues and in working abroad on projects that are beneficial to humanity. My ideal job would be what I’m doing now. I just didn’t really know how to go about it before.
I got a D in A-level geography. But it was one of the few subjects I was interested in. I was at a very straight old-school grammar school and, to be honest, there was a complete lack of anything else I wanted to study. The school didn’t offer sociology or psychology.
I always liked going on field trips. Living here in Lancashire, you have this amazing local environment, so I really enjoyed walking up canyons and limestone pavements. But, if I think about it now, I found the physical stuff comparatively dull. I was always more drawn to the social side.
Geography is so broad. I think that’s its strength as a subject. I suppose my master’s project was social geography really. It let me write a thesis about corporate citizenship under [Lancaster University’s] geography department. What other department would you be able to do that sort of research under?
I went to Nigeria to study the oil industry. My thesis compared Exxon Mobil’s corporate citizenship stance with community perceptions of its activity, analysing whether their corporate citizenship stance was based on community relations or public relations. What did I find? What do you think?
Poverty fuels the belief in child witches. If you look at the other countries with child witch problems – Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo – they are post-conflict countries. This creates a social vacuum. It gets filled by revivalist Pentecostal churches that give people hope in a hopeless situation and attribute the blame for their problems on demonic forces.
In Nigeria, a social vacuum has been created by widespread environmental degradation caused by the oil industry. They’re still flaring the gas there, for goodness’ sake. At night, just offshore, the whole sky is lit up. You can see huge black plumes of smoke going up. It’s clearly causing health problems for the children we’re working with. The average life expectancy is 42 and dropping.
When I first went to Nigeria, I heard stories about children throwing up frogs or turning into goats. I was incredulous. It was only when we got there and were setting up the school project that we really gained an understanding of the depth of belief and the scale of child abandonment.
We generally say 95 per cent of people believe that children could be witches. But I would say that’s a conservative estimate. Even high court judges, businessmen, well-travelled academics, governors, whoever, they generally all believe in child witches.
All of the child witches have been tortured in one way or another. Maybe they’re in the church one day, the pastor points to the child, says that they’re a witch. Then they’re brought to church and kept awake night after night, forced to drink concoctions to deliver them from the evil spirits. Sometimes they’re incarcerated in the churches, beaten, starved. Sometimes hot oil is poured on their heads, they’re buried alive, drowned. But those are the extreme cases.
Education and enlightenment are the best ways of working against these beliefs. We are trying to make people realise that a child who wets the bed isn’t a witch; epilepsy isn’t witchcraft; HIV and AIDS aren’t witchcraft. We’re also trying to work with the church to regulate the activities of the pastors, and with the legislature to get them to fully enforce the child rights acts and ensure children’s rights are protected.
You have to separate the belief from the actions, but it’s very difficult to do. I find it extremely challenging to not just say, ‘How can you believe in this nonsense?’ But as an organisation, we don’t want to demonise communities or faith groups. We’re trying to focus on the fact that you can believe whatever you want, just so long as you don’t start bathing kids in acid or setting them on fire.
Curriculum vitae
1979 Born in Lancaster, Lancashire
1991–98 Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Lancaster
2001 Social and Cultural Studies BA Hons, University of Derby
2003 MRes Environment and Development, Department of Geography, Lancaster, with an overseas placement in Nigeria
2005 Stepping Stones registered as a charity
2005–06 Built school and started other projects to protect disadvantaged children in Akwa Ibon state, Nigeria, with partner, Naomi Chapple
2008 Akwa Ibon state brings in a law outlawing the stigmatisation of children as witches as a direct result of Stepping Stones’ campaigning
April 2009
I’ve always been interested in social justice and environmental issues and in working abroad on projects that are beneficial to humanity. My ideal job would be what I’m doing now. I just didn’t really know how to go about it before.
I got a D in A-level geography. But it was one of the few subjects I was interested in. I was at a very straight old-school grammar school and, to be honest, there was a complete lack of anything else I wanted to study. The school didn’t offer sociology or psychology.
I always liked going on field trips. Living here in Lancashire, you have this amazing local environment, so I really enjoyed walking up canyons and limestone pavements. But, if I think about it now, I found the physical stuff comparatively dull. I was always more drawn to the social side.
Geography is so broad. I think that’s its strength as a subject. I suppose my master’s project was social geography really. It let me write a thesis about corporate citizenship under [Lancaster University’s] geography department. What other department would you be able to do that sort of research under?
I went to Nigeria to study the oil industry. My thesis compared Exxon Mobil’s corporate citizenship stance with community perceptions of its activity, analysing whether their corporate citizenship stance was based on community relations or public relations. What did I find? What do you think?
Poverty fuels the belief in child witches. If you look at the other countries with child witch problems – Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo – they are post-conflict countries. This creates a social vacuum. It gets filled by revivalist Pentecostal churches that give people hope in a hopeless situation and attribute the blame for their problems on demonic forces.
In Nigeria, a social vacuum has been created by widespread environmental degradation caused by the oil industry. They’re still flaring the gas there, for goodness’ sake. At night, just offshore, the whole sky is lit up. You can see huge black plumes of smoke going up. It’s clearly causing health problems for the children we’re working with. The average life expectancy is 42 and dropping.
When I first went to Nigeria, I heard stories about children throwing up frogs or turning into goats. I was incredulous. It was only when we got there and were setting up the school project that we really gained an understanding of the depth of belief and the scale of child abandonment.
We generally say 95 per cent of people believe that children could be witches. But I would say that’s a conservative estimate. Even high court judges, businessmen, well-travelled academics, governors, whoever, they generally all believe in child witches.
All of the child witches have been tortured in one way or another. Maybe they’re in the church one day, the pastor points to the child, says that they’re a witch. Then they’re brought to church and kept awake night after night, forced to drink concoctions to deliver them from the evil spirits. Sometimes they’re incarcerated in the churches, beaten, starved. Sometimes hot oil is poured on their heads, they’re buried alive, drowned. But those are the extreme cases.
Education and enlightenment are the best ways of working against these beliefs. We are trying to make people realise that a child who wets the bed isn’t a witch; epilepsy isn’t witchcraft; HIV and AIDS aren’t witchcraft. We’re also trying to work with the church to regulate the activities of the pastors, and with the legislature to get them to fully enforce the child rights acts and ensure children’s rights are protected.
You have to separate the belief from the actions, but it’s very difficult to do. I find it extremely challenging to not just say, ‘How can you believe in this nonsense?’ But as an organisation, we don’t want to demonise communities or faith groups. We’re trying to focus on the fact that you can believe whatever you want, just so long as you don’t start bathing kids in acid or setting them on fire.
Curriculum vitae
1979 Born in Lancaster, Lancashire
1991–98 Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Lancaster
2001 Social and Cultural Studies BA Hons, University of Derby
2003 MRes Environment and Development, Department of Geography, Lancaster, with an overseas placement in Nigeria
2005 Stepping Stones registered as a charity
2005–06 Built school and started other projects to protect disadvantaged children in Akwa Ibon state, Nigeria, with partner, Naomi Chapple
2008 Akwa Ibon state brings in a law outlawing the stigmatisation of children as witches as a direct result of Stepping Stones’ campaigning
April 2009
