Mr Martins Nwabueze founder and CEO of Tilova For Africa a Charity and Equal Rights Group in America has called on Gov. Chukwuma Soludo not to make Native Doctors scapegoats in his determined effort to fight criminality and restore sanity in Anambra.
Nwabueze said it is wrong to challenge Native Doctors to show the ailments they cure as a means to saperate real dibia from fake ones since not all Native Doctors are traditional medicine practioners better known as herbalists.
He said Dibia like medicine is an umbrella profession
with different variants of areas of specialties adding that the government should profile them and judge them according to the specific job they claim to do.
He said herbalists were practitioners of traditional medicine known as “ndi nkpa-akwukwo na ngbologu” while other dibia are into divination, ” Igba afa” “Ilu agwu” ” ima ita” and others which do not involve medicine but utilization of supernatural powers.
According to him, in traditional Igbo society Dibia involves divination, “Igba afa” and a dibia or native doctor may necessarily not be a herbalist or traditional medicine practitioner.
“It is this confusion in understanding the differences between the duties of a dibia and a traditional medicine practitioner that always makes Soludo to demand that a dibia must say what disease he cures or treats to be considered genuine.
“Not all dibia cure ailments, not all dibia are herbalist, some are strictly into divination, ” Igba afa” “Ilu agwu” ” ima ita” and others that do not involve medicine,” he said.
Nwabueze wondered what criteria are out in place to determine who the genuine or fake native doctors are.
He said anybody linked to crimes should be arrested and prosecuted irrespective of status on the weight of evidence against him or her and not on account of his or religion or social inclination.
“What made them suspects, because Soludo believes they are?I am worried that native doctors are being targeted by the Soludp administration unjustly
“Who.are the judges that will separate quacks from experts, what qualifications make one dibia quack and another expert?
“Is Soludo going to gather his own Dibia so that their snakes and Akwa okuku’s snakes will fight each other to know which has more powers like the biblical Pharaoh and Moses incident?
“And why are some pastors not in custody pending the outcome of investigations to determine which are quacks?
Mr Nwabueze advised that a better and more practical way to positively influence our youths orientation and sanitize the state would be through leadership by example, education, job creation, public enlightenment campaigns and fight against corruption illicit drug circulation and abuse. The drug abuse epidermic which affects thousands of youths in Anambra state should be a priority rather than arrest and detention of a few online native doctors creating contents.
“We must stop persecuting traditional religion practitioners because they are in the minority, it is unfair and it is unjust.
“Societies work better when all are treated equally irrespective of their religious beliefs, sex, disease state, color or sexual orientations.
