Pre-eminent Nigerian rationalist’s Facebook account remains inaccessible more than 20 days since its 2nd disablement
by Dr. Piyush Mathur
Globally renowned for his decades-long grassroots activism against witch hunts (and other forms of coercively irrational practices) across Africa, Dr. Leo Igwe has been left bitterly frustrated by Meta Platforms. Inc.—which disabled his Facebook account a 2nd time this year.
Leo Igwe, Nigeria’s pre-eminent crusader against Africa’s witch-hunters and coercive irrationalists
Igwe—who founded Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) as an affiliate of the Critical Thinking Social Empowerment Foundation he directs—depends on key social media platforms, including Facebook, to send out his (frequent) calls to action, activist updates, event notifications, and educational/philosophical messages. For him to lose any of these social media handles deprives him of direct access to his followers and random audience specific to them; losing this access creates significant hurdles to his mass communicational efforts, advocacy, and even last-minute alarms—intended to send out quick rescues to victims of witch hunts, for instance.
Ironically, Igwe’s Facebook account got disabled both the times owing to his explicit messaging—involving calls to action against irrationalist acts of violence perpetrated by self-styled spiritualists (or people acting upon their proclaimed metaphysical impulses). The last time Igwe’s FB account was disabled was in early January; an online campaign to get it restored was also soon initiated following a Thoughtfox report on that incident. Presumably as a result of that report and campaign, Igwe’s FB access was restored within a few days.
It seems, though, that FB’s community monitoring system didn’t learn anything deep, or anything at all, from that first mishap. On August 21, Igwe again found his FB account disabled, with the system telling him, just as it had done the last time, that he had violated community norms. The disablement took place hours after he had posted an already circulating video clip showing a Rivers State pastor whipping around 25 naked, young children—one after another—ostensibly as part of an assumed exorcism ritual.
Notably, Igwe hadn’t just re-posted the clip—if that, on its own, could be construed (in some banal universe as unwarranted, morbid sensationalism). Rather, he had also alerted Nigeria’s police, local co-activists, and his global supporters, to the captured instance of abuse; in fact, he had also announced his plans to send out his organisation’s regional investigator and associated rescuers to the area as part of his post.
Indeed, disseminating the information about this abuse and getting as many people as possible to rally against it was the whole point of his exercise in that post—and nor is it anything new for him, in substance. Hardly a week goes by when Igwe is not rallying Netizens to put up yet another fight against irrationalist abuses in real time, and not only in Nigeria. It just seems that the FB system tends to approach visual material quite differently than textual messaging—and lacks the capability and/or dedication to put the former within the context of the overall message about it.
A few days after his FB account’s disablement, The Punch, a prominent Nigerian newspaper, would report this particular incident of irrationalist abuse based precisely upon that video—and also name the pastor as well as the church involved. In the meantime, though, Igwe’s repeated appeals—so long as they were permitted by the FB’s automated system—would keep hitting the proverbial brick wall.
As of September 12, Igwe remains helplessly locked out of his account. It is rather a peculiar irony that a frontline purveyor of reason and enlightenment located in a part of the world that is frequently stereotyped in the developed world as backward and regressive must continue to struggle against the automated system of an American technological corporation that tends to present itself as empowering, enlightening, and free-speech promoting. Meanwhile, even as Igwe and his organisation prepare for an open-access community discussion tomorrow, September 13, in Port Harcourt—hoping to debunk a somewhat culturally popular notion in Sub-Saharan Africa that money could be made through metaphysical means (such as witchcraft, magical spells and so on)—supporters of his cause are busy preparing another online petition to put pressure on Meta Platforms, Inc., to restore his access to his Facebook account.
This is more important than many people—unaware of the media environment of Africa—might realise: Only around 5 months ago, Igwe was asked by the African Independent Television (AIT), a private entity owned by Daar Communications, to pay 1.8 million naira for an opportunity he had sought from them to briefly speak out on TV against witch hunts and associated abuses in Nigeria. The point is, social media platforms, like Facebook, are critically needed, and more so in some parts of the world than others, to fight social injustices—because many established media houses tend to be busy reinforcing them, one way or another.
Thoughtfox will post the link to the online petition here once it is ready.