The Ambiguity of Twins and Spirit Children: An Introduction

In 1992, Helen Ukpabio, a nurse from Imo state in Nigeria, founded Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, a Pentecostal movement occupied with the presence of Satan in the world. An important aspect of their theology was how Satan was using children to allow demons to possess them. Her Church grew rapidly, leading to an increase in witchhunts directed at children from the early years of the founding of the Church. Despite Ukpabio's deportation from Nigeria to the United Kingdom in 2014, these witch-hunts of children still go on, albeit in a lesser magnitude thanks to the work of Sam Itauma and his associates who managed to establish the Child Rehabilitation Network (CRARN) in Eket, Nigeria, in 2003. Children were exposed to torture, lobotomy and screws driven into their heads to drive away the demons. These forms of exorcisms, found to be failing, would lead to the execution of the child. Helen Ukpabio stated in one of her numerous publications, ‘If a child under the age of two screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health he or she is a servant of Satan.’ A condensed presentation of what was and is going on was collected by Awo Falokun and can be found on his website. Among what he imparts we find the following:

The mission of Ukpabio represents a particular ambivalence concerning children and in particular twins. This ambivalence, addressed in this chapter, questions the natural order of phenomena, as twins are seen as an anomaly. This anomaly is rooted in the perception that all humans have a double in ikole orun (the invisible realms/heaven), so the visible presence of both the child that was meant to be born along with its invisible double raises several concerns related to fortune and misfortune, witchcraft and mystery. Clearly there has been a shift in perception, from the eighteenth-century killings of twin children in large parts of Nigeria to present-day Hollywood movies that enjoyed great national success with the movie trilogy Evil Twins, which popularized this ambivalence and threat on natural order represented by twins in this form.