Nwamaka Ikediashi, an official of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) in Rivers State, has said that parents of some minors who were brutally flogged by a pastor during a “spiritual cleansing” exercise need counselling.

Ikediashi stated this on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Friday during an update on the incident and actions taken by the agency.

She said, “It is a total case of child abuse, and the parents are victims, and they are supposed to be made to understand the implications of this whole thing, and that can only be made possible via counseling.”

The pastor identified as Ifediorah Joseph in Rivers State was arrested by the police for flogging children during a three-day programme under the guise of “spiritual cleansing”.

Following the pastor’s arrest, some of the children and their parents appeared at the police station in Port Harcourt, singing and dancing to show solidarity with the pastor.

The parents insisted that they gave full consent to the pastor to carry out the spiritual act on their children.

“My daughter was among the children that was purified. The message was that death was in the air, and they should purify the children. They did the purification with pigeon blood, water and palm fruit,” one of the parents of the abused children told journalists.

However, the NAPTIP official said the parents involved need counselling. “The parents are victims as well because they do not understand the implications, but if they did understand, they would not let their children be subjected to such inhuman treatment and torture,” she said.(Channels)