Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has expressed concern over the growing number of youths deceived by fake native doctors into believing that they can traffic drugs without being caught.
Soludo disclosed that 23 indigenes of Anambra are currently on death row in Indonesia for drug-related offences, attributing the unfortunate trend to blind faith in charms and get-rich-quick promises.
“Go to Indonesia, 23 Ndi Anambra are on death row there for drug-related offences,” the governor lamented.
He explained that many of the convicted youths had been deceived into believing that native doctors could make them invisible to airport scanners.
“These native doctors will deceive you that they will prepare a charm that when you carry drugs and enter the airport, the white man’s scanner will go blind,” he said. “These young people believe them, and today, many of our people are languishing in jail across the world.”
Soludo, who spoke while addressing defectors from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in support of his re-election bid, warned that anyone caught promoting such deceptive practices would face arrest and prosecution.
He criticized the so-called native doctors for exploiting the desperation of young people, noting that many of them could not even use their supposed powers to better their own lives.
“One of the native doctors who is in detention, his son is a waiter in a hotel in Nnewi. If it was that simple, why didn’t he make his son a millionaire?” he asked.
“One of them that we arrested has sworn that he is just a content creator, yet he has used things like these to deceive our young people that you can become rich without doing any work, as far as you have done oke ite (money rituals).”
Soludo lamented that the belief in such get-rich-quick schemes was gradually destroying the mindset of youths in the state.
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“That is why you see young people who wake up in the morning and retire to beer parlours drinking, hoping to get rich later in life,” he said.
The governor, however, clarified that his administration is not opposed to traditional religion but is focused on stamping out dangerous practices being passed off as spirituality.
“We are not against traditional worshippers; what we are against is people who are doing dangerous medicines and charms,” he stressed.
“We have always known those who are into traditional practices. They have things they believe in, and they were about the most upright people then.
Those were people who believed that if you did the wrong thing, you could be killed by the gods of the land. But what these new crop of criminal native doctors are doing is deceit, and we will not allow that to continue.”
Soludo reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to clamping down on promoters of oke ite and other fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes misleading the youth.
