Court sentences man to death for killing daughters over alleged witchcraft

The Cross River State High Court on Wednesday sentenced a middle-aged man, Ayanime Udo, to death by hanging for killing his 11-year-old twin daughters over allegations of witchcraft.

Justice Agnes Onyebueke, who delivered the verdict, described Udo’s act as not only barbaric but “satanic, demonic, and beyond human comprehension.’’

She held that the prosecution had proven its case beyond every reasonable doubt and that Udo had “willfully and gruesomely murdered his 11-year-old twin, Mfoniso Anyanime and Emediong Anyanime in 2017 after dubbing them witches.”

READ ALSO: Woman locked in a cage for four years over alleged witchcraft regains freedom in Delta

The convict, who was cross-examined by the state counsel, confessed that he gave the girls a malt drink mixed with acid from his motorcycle.

“One of the girls reportedly died on the spot on January 10, 2017, while the second crawled to the road where a Good Samaritan picked and took her to the hospital but she died the next day,” a Child Rights Activist, James Ibor, told the court.

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