Spiritualist Arrested After Man Drowns During Spiritual Cleansing

A 23-year-old man identified as Chiemelie Nnaji, has drowned at a river during an exorcism ritual in Enugu state.

The victim was known within the neighbourhood to suffer from epilepsy.
It was gathered the incident occurred on when, Chiemelie’s mother, popularly known as Ezenwanyi, took him and a middle-aged female client, to the river known as Mmiri Ani at Obiagu area of the state capital for a spiritual cleansing.

It was gathered that the spiritualist was coaching her son to take over the spiritualist business from her.

Residents of the community say while Ezenwanyi was using a native fowl to conduct the exorcism ritual inside the river, Chiemelie relapsed into epilepsy and fell deep into the river that was chest deep.

His mother, who was said to be filled ‘with the spirits,’ however continued chanting incantations, refusing to render any assistance to the drowning man despite being notified by her client.

It was further learnt it was the female client who forced the exercise to stop and raised the alarm that attracted people from the neighbourhood, who helped to rescue Chiemelie’s drowning body while he was said to still be alive. He sadly died after being rejected at two different hospitals.

“When we got to the river, we met Ezenwanyi chanting incantations while the other woman was crying helplessly. But we managed to bring him out and took him to the hospital. The two hospitals we took him to rejected him. It was at the third hospital that he was pronounced dead,” an eyewitness said

The state police command is said to have arrested the spiritualist.

The Nation