RDC wants traditional healers counted after suspected child sacrifice

Ms Mariam Nalubega Sseguya, the Kiboga Resident District Commissioner has ordered  a head count and identification programme aimed at registering all genuine traditional healers  in the district .

If well conducted, Ms Nalubega said the exercise will help weed out quacks who have over the years infiltrated the traditional healers’ business and tarnished their image by engaging in felonious acts like child sacrifice, theft, robbery and rape.

“Many wrong elements are masquerading as traditional healers to achieve their ill intentions which has tarnished the name of herbalists in the country. We are going to have this census to weed out all fake traditional healers who are engaging in criminal activities,” she said  while addressing a security meeting at Kirinda Village ,Kiboga District on April 5.

The meeting was attended by internal security officers at all levels, village chairpersons and religious leaders.

She also ordered for the arrest of Sulamain Ssentongo, a traditional healer who is suspected to be behind the Thursday morning suspected ritual murder of two siblings at Kirinda Village.

“His [Ssentongo]  wife is already in police custody, but we need him also to tell us what he knows about this heinous act,” she said.

This comes a day after mutilated body parts of fiver-year-old Esther Nakasumba and her two-year-old sister Sylvia Natongo were recovered from a brick furnace near Kasinina Elimu Church, located less than a kilometre from the victims home in Kirinda.

The duo had gone missing on April 3 after their parents whom they had accompanied to their farm asked them to go back home for lunch, but they never reached their destination.

Ms Maria Lubega , the Deputy RDC Kiboga District said there are too many shrines in the area and they need to be checked.

“ We are going to comb one by one to find out what exactly is taking place there,” she said.

Traditional healers have for a long time been blamed for the recurrent cases of child sacrifice and mysterious deaths especially in central region, while some have been accused of raping women who visit their shrines.

In  2018 , Local leaders in neigbouring Mubende District called for banning of  the traditional healers in  the area saying they advertise on various radio stations that they have super natural powers to make people  rich, which is not true.

Some people who visit shrines claim that traditional healers use remains of the dead to cast spells on their clients’ enemies. However, this cannot be elaborately explained  by practitioners or  proven scientifically.