Witchcraft in the Ibibio Tribe

Witchcraft has become a phenomenon in the last few years, launching TV shows and movies onto the screens of televisions and cinemas. It has become an inspirational topic for writers to launch their next book. But, as entertaining as witchcraft maybe to us, it is feared by the Ibibio tribe of Nigeria. This paper will focus on how the Ibibio tribe detected, prevented witchcraft and the massive anti-witch hunt that took place all around Africa. Also, this paper will analyze presumptive causes that could have led to a witchcraft outbreak in the Ibibio.

Nigeria has had its share of outbreaks but, out of all of them the most unique must have been the witchcraft outbreak that plagued all of Nigeria and the rest of Africa. The Ibibio tribe of Nigeria in the seventeenth century, where about two million people that were mostly “agrarians” or “petty traders”, according to Daniel Offiong, researcher and author of “Social Relations and Witchcraft Beliefs Among the Ibibio” and “Witchcraft Among the Ibibio of Nigeria”. The tribe was mainly Christian with a few Muslims (Offiong, 1983, pg. 73). They believed in one god and the Holy Ghost, but when they had to deal with an affliction, they went to diviners or spiritualists for treatment (Offiong, 1983, pg. 73-74). When they were plagued with a problem, their main reaction was to blame the problem on witchcraft with no logical explanation behind it. The existence of witchcraft started in Nigeria, due to the continuous process of blaming witchcraft for unexplainable problems.

Once witchcraft became the cause of the unexplained problem, people started accusing each other of being witches. Research conducted by Daniel A. Offiong, suggests that the people who were more prone to be accused of witchcr...

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... used and the anti-witchcraft crusade that took place. It also went into the social elements that may have played a part in the outbreak of witchcraft in this tribe.

Works Cited

Shaman. (2011, 1 11). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

Marwick, M. G. (1952). The Social Context of Cewa Witch Beliefs. Cambridge University Press, 120-135.

Offiong, D. (1983). Social Relations and Witch Beliefs among the Ibibio. Cambridge University Press, 73-82.

Offiong, D. A. (1983). Witchcraft Among the Ibibio of Nigeria. African Studies Association, 107-124.

Offiong, D. A. (1999). Traditional Healers in the Nigerian Health Care System and the Debate Over Integrating Traditional and Scientific Medicine. Anthropological Quarterly, 118-130.

William A. Haviland, H. E. (2008). Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challege. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.