Leo Igwe

Leo Igwe
Born	(1970-07-26) July 26, 1970 Nigeria
Website	http://www.iheu.org/taxonomy/term/443

Leo Igwe (born July 26, 1970) is a Nigerian humanist and human rights activist, and a former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Igwe has campaigned against child witchcraft, and is currently engaged in researching African witchcraft accusations and their social impact at the Bayreuth International School of African Studies, of the University of Bayreuth, Germany. In his fight against irrationality and deadly superstition which has claimed the lives of children branded 'witch' or 'wizard', Igwe has famously locked horns with Helen Ukpabio, the founder and head of African Evangelical franchise Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries in Nigeria, and an established believer in witchcraft and demonic possessions. Igwe's pathbreaking work combating witchhunts, especially in Nigeria and Malawi, has been featured on TV and radio in Europe, Australia and North America. On several occasions, Igwe has personally saved children who have been beaten, raped and faced death because they have been accused of witchcraft.

Leo Igwe participated in a Panel: "From Witch-burning to God-men: Supporting Skepticism Around the World" at The Amaz!ng Meeting, July 12, 2012, in Las Vegas, NV, USA

Leo Igwe was recently appointed as a research fellow by the James Randi Educational Foundation, a skeptical, non-profit organization founded by magician and skeptic James Randi. This appointment is expected to support his work advancing skepticism throughout Africa and around the world. A statement from JREF stated:

Mr. Igwe, in partnership with the JREF, will work to respond to harmful and growing superstitious beliefs throughout Africa, including belief in psuedoscientific “medicine,” and witchcraft, which result in heinous murders of adults and children alike. A recent poll showed that about 55% of people living in Africa believe in witchcraft, despite no evidence that these powers exist. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, a lack of science education was correlated with an increased belief in witchcraft, indicating a need for more education throughout Africa on the dangers of unfounded belief in the paranormal. Igwe will report on the state of superstition and paranormal belief in Africa regularly at randi.org, with his column, Skeptical Africa. Through his work in the field and in academia, Mr. Igwe aims to better understand the causes of harmful and unfounded superstition across the continent, and to help combat it through educating the public, both in the US and abroad.

Leo Igwe has authored an essay titled A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa, a clarion call to African skeptics, science advocates, humanists and secularists. Igwe made a poster presentation at the 6th World Skeptics Congress (May 18–20, 2012) in Berlin, Germany, with graphic accounts of the trials that he and many of his supporters have faced in Africa, while protesting the persecution and killing of children and minorities, and the failures on the part of law enforcement and religious leaders to challenge such atrocities. In course of an interview later, Igwe explained the importance of his work in Africa:

A lot of work has been done in Europe, in Australia, in America, but not much has been done in Africa. So the posters are there to let international participants understand the challenges we are facing in the area of witchcraft accusation... They’re about the role churches are playing, where there are the witch doctors; pastors are the modern day, if I can use that word, witch doctors in Africa. I look at the part that Islam and Christianity are playing—they reinforce superstitions in the modern day, and are not addressing them. Incidentally, Christianity, maybe because it was brought by Europeans, it’s considered to be civilized. At the end of it all, I see them as another form of superstition, and it is not helping our efforts to promote reason, science, and critical thinking in Africa... We also have, of course, traditional superstitious beliefs that have nothing to do with Christianity. They have a lot to do in terms of being also on the same irrational platform, like ritual killing/human sacrifice—which many people don't want to talk about—but that's exactly what we’re facing. People honestly think there are agents somewhere who can be appeased by sacrifices—the killing of something, an animal or even a person. We also have the problem of persecution of albinos, particularly in East Africa. We have persecution of children, sacrifices of children in Uganda, Nigeria, and Swaziland, and all of that. But the fact there is that there are no rational voices; even though there are people who are rationally minded, they are not speaking out. This is because sometimes they are afraid—maybe, they might think there could be some supernatural backfiring or retribution—they just don't want to tamper with those things.