Journey to the Unknown: The Culture of the Killing of Twins in FCT Abuja Revealed

 

It was a hot afternoon in April 2016, we are a set of more than 10 women who drove to two orphanages, our first stop was a home at the Christ Treasured Orphanage in Kwali, where we visited a school under construction with hopes of raising funds to complete the project. 

 

The next stop on the same day was Kuje, Vine Heritage home where rescued children from culture and tradition of death, live.

 

The journey to my report started from there. I engaged the missionary who explained to me how they have been rescuing ‘endangered` children for the past 22 years and how they have a recently rescued 1-month-old twins from one of the interior villages. 

 

 

And, I asked him if other media house had visited the villages in the past, he nodded his head and mentioned a popular TV station that did a coverage few years ago. I asked him if I can visit some of the locals and he said ‘at your own risk’…. this made me scared. 

 

I told a colleague. Yinka Adeparusi about my fear, Yinka became nervous but positive, we encouraged each other which was the beginning of the birth of the investigative report. Every risk is worth taking if we carefully strategize.

 

 

Our aim is to get these locals to tell us about the practise and if we come out straight and disclose our mission, they could attack and probably kill us. We discovered that, this is a custom which they are all sensitive about and would rather not talk about. 

 

Yinka and I decided to stick to maternal healthcare and hospitals, during our discussion, I will ask about child care and how the upper tooth grows, from there to twins affairs which we asked briefly without much emphasis, none but a family suspected us and the moment I popped the question and our guide interpreted to them, the women started murmuring loudly in their native language. 

 

The situation became scary and I changed the topic immediately to the lack of schools. This scenario happened in Dafa village, Kwali area council.

 

Safety is not guaranteed; the locals could attack us. The roads are bad and not motorable, we trekked a lot. Because they are remote villages without electricity or phone network, we might not be able to seek help if anything happens to us in the course of the journey.

 

Language and communication could be a barrier. 

 

Yinka and I drove for almost an hour to inner Kuje, outskirt of Abuja – the orphanage, to interview the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens running the place. We left the home for Kiyi village to speak with the locals, communication was hard of course but we got a guy who helped with pidgin English. The Kiyi people speak Gwari language and said they no longer kill twins but confessed it happened in the past. After this I started making consultations and also commenced research about the interior villages within the FCT area council.

 

 

An Abuja indigene, Joseph followed us as a guide to Kwali and Bwari respectively. He speaks the Gbagyi language. We met a heavily pregnant woman who said she doesn’t want twins in the Kwali area council. She couldn’t speak English and was in pain waiting for her water to pop so she can give birth to her baby at home. After all was done and dusted, it took about three locals to help with transcription and translation. It was not easy getting this people to travel all the way down to the city centre, some of my personal income expended into transporting them, if you ask me, it was worth it!

 

Elijah, Joseph and Blessing helped translate at different times, the three major languages spoken to us in the sojourn were; Gwari, Gbagyi and Bassa. It is also good to note that the Abuja indigenes are 90% Christians and 10% are Muslims and other religion. We travelled different times and days to the interior villages.

 

The altar is very important to the report which are usually build inside the houses, this is not easy to access. I was also forewarned not to move closer to it because of the contents inside it which are harzadous when inhaled. We were denied access in some houses, but got help when a youth who is not happy with the custom took us to a house and explained to us how things work, especially the twin altar. I must have inhaled something from the Twin Altar because I broke down for two days after the visit, my head was banging with strange noises, sneezing and a kind of hallucination.

 

 

Click Here to read the full report on Naij.com