The Black Non-Belief Project is a transnational movement with great potential and promise, offering hope and renewal to people and parts of the world blighted by blind faith, dogma, and despair. It offers another opportunity to explore the potential and promises of non-belief in Black communities. The initiative resonates with the needs and aspirations of millions of people existentially burdened by religion and superstition, those who yearn for the empowering and liberating possibilities of liberty.
The Black Non-Belief Project provides an opportunity to correct misconceptions and misrepresentations of black people and communities. Black people have stereotypically been presented as religious. They have been identified as Baptists, Christians, Muslims, or as theists when they are not. Black people have longed to live free from dogma and superstitions.
To combat the prejudice and misconception that darken and destroy too many lives, it is pertinent to highlight the wave of reason, critical thinking, and freethought sweeping across black communities. Data from the Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) helps to shed light on just one of those initiatives: the anti-witch-hunting campaign. Are alleged witches persecuted in Nigeria and other parts of Africa? Yes, of course. Can we end witch hunting in Africa? I believe we can.
fThere is a tendency to compare witch hunting in early modern Europe, 17th-century America, and contemporary Africa. This comparison discounts the fact that the social, cultural, and historical circumstances of the 17th-century West were different from the life situations in Africa today. Many tend to hold the simplistic notion that witch persecution persists in Africa because Africans, and by extension blacks, are hard-wired to be religious. The situation is more complicated than that. Blind faith in religion and paranormal beliefs is still widespread in the West and in the rest of the world.
In 2020, I founded the AfAW with the goal, as French philosopher Voltaire noted, Ecrasez l’infame: to crush the infamous campaign of witch hunting. I founded the advocacy group to correct mistaken assumptions. I was dissatisfied with the way that the campaign against witch hunts in Africa had been waged. I objected to the lacklustre approach and wanted to do things differently.
Over the past decades, I have worked with Western organisations that focused on specific demographics; they were not ready to address the problem as a whole. Some frowned at criticising pastors and churches, even when religious actors and institutions were the infamous drivers of witch persecution. Once queried for using the slogan “No Witches No Wizards” in my public education programs, I was told that such a tacit atheistic approach would alienate the people. These NGO leaders have forgotten that the campaign against witch hunts is not meant to entertain but to enlighten, to weaken the grip of this superstition on the minds of the people.
The advocacy campaign was meant to reorient and awaken people from their dogmatic slumber. Many Western NGOs use a patronising approach under the pretext of respecting African religious and cultural sensibilities. Some deny funding to African NGOs and activists who do not align with their agenda.
To provide a framework for this change and challenge, AfAW outlined a decade of activism aimed at ending witch hunts in Africa by 2030. To some observers, the vision sounded like a pipe dream. However, it is achievable, as long as the will exists; we do not even need to wait ’til 2030 to make this dream of ending witch-hunting in Africa a reality. Witch hunting persists in the region due to ignorance, misinformation, and disinformation. Witch persecution continues due to actions and reactions motivated by superstitious and irrational beliefs. Witch hunting takes place because of the inaction of the victims and the accused.
Navigating resistance
At the information level, AfAW tries to clarify the concept of witchcraft, highlighting embedded misinterpretations. Witchcraft is not a Nigerian or an African word, but an English word used to explain a phenomenon that manifests in non-European and non-English settings. Witchcraft comes with so much conceptual baggage, which many have overlooked to their peril. A lot has been missing and mistaken in translation and application. And those missing bits and pieces have complicated efforts to situate and end witch hunts in the region.
As part of our strategy, AfAW corrects the misconceptions and misrepresentations by Western anthropologists and their African counterparts. Anthropologists have argued that, unlike in the West, witchcraft accusations have some domestic value and fulfill useful functions in Africa. Witch hunting is a mechanism for social stability and harmony. Anthropologists conflate witchcraft with African traditional religion, mischaracterising traditional religious beliefs as evil. The notion of witchcraft in Africa, layered with Christian bias, serves the missionising purpose of Christianity, making witch hunting a form of traditional religion-hunt.
As a part of the campaign, witchcraft accusers, and romanticisers, peddlers of misinformation and disinformation linked to witch hunting, including scholars, clerics, state and non-state actors, are challenged and compelled to provide evidence for their claims. Advocates debate, argue, and dispute baseless assumptions on social and mainstream media. They call out flimsy, whimsical, and anecdotal evidence that enables witch-hunting. For instance, advocates interrogate the claim that humans turn into birds or cats, or engage in spiritual and nocturnal flights to inflict harm, cause diseases, accidents, or death.
This skeptical approach touches on people’s religious beliefs and sensibilities, and often elicits pushback, some opposition, and hostility from witch-believing people. At AfAW events, people get visibly angry and upset when one challenges their deep-seated superstitious narratives. At the Benue State University, some students told me that someone suspected of turning into a hyena was killed. In response, I said to them that the perpetrators should be jailed, because they murdered an innocent person, and that no human being could turn into a hyena. In response, some students told me that if I came to their communities and made that comment, people would beat me up. Advocates run the risk of being attacked and killed for their views. Sometimes they accuse advocates of intolerance or of imposing ideas on them.
On many occasions, when I post comments on social media that witches do not exist, some respond by asking me, “Are you an atheist?” Some stigma is attached to being an atheist, and the question is asked to discredit my argument and position. To many people in Nigeria, one must be a non-believer, an atheist, or a humanist to dispute the reality of witchcraft and wage an effective campaign against witch hunts. And many Africans are not ready to relinquish their ‘faith’ to advance the cause of a witch-hunting free Africa.
In addition to dispelling misinformation and disinformation, the Advocacy for Alleged Witches initiates and facilitates actions, interventions, and reactions to cases of witch persecution. Witch hunting persists because of impunity; because there are no consequences for acts of witchcraft accusation and witch persecution. Witch persecutors largely go scot free. Most often, victims resign themselves to the situation; they take no measures against their abusers. They do not hold witch hunters accountable and responsible. In Nigeria, many victims of witch hunts tell advocates that they have handed their cases over to God to judge and reward.
AfAW rejects such impotent posturing and postulations. As noted in the second humanist manifesto, “No deity will save us, we must save ourselves”. The AfAW works and campaigns, bearing in mind that no deity would save or rescue the accused. No supernatural agent would stop witch hunting or take on cases on behalf of the accused. We empower victims to take actions against their accusers and persecutors. Non-belief is deployed as a resource to end witch-hunting in black communities.
