When two police officers in Florence, Italy, received a distress call from an 87-year-old woman, they expected a crime. But what they found was a wound deeper than robbery—the wound of abandonment. She was not in danger of theft, but of vanishing into loneliness. Officers Antonio and Giuseppe didn’t just follow protocol; they followed compassion. They entered her kitchen, cooked tomato ravioli , and sat with her until her soul tasted what it hadn’t in years: human warmth. In that singular act, they rebuked a world that claims to be connected yet is rotting in relational disconnection.
But Nigeria tells a darker version of this story—one soaked in suspicion, steeped in spiritual paranoia, and made cruel by counterfeit revelations. In several states, including Kogi, aged mothers and fathers have become suspects of witchcraft in their own homes. Their crime? Loving too deeply. Praying too loudly. Excessive long life and becoming a liability. Or worse—having once visited a river deity decades ago in the agony of childlessness.
I recall vividly an aged mother who came to me for prayer and counseling. Her heart was not burdened for herself but for her children in the city, whose lives were plagued by hardship. As I prayed, the Lord whispered: “Tell her to prepare, for soon they will call her a witch.
Again, God showed me where she once went to seek a child. Hence, she confessed that in her youth, in desperation and humiliations from age mates and co wives, she had secretly visited a river shrine. Soon after, she conceived her firstborn. Years later, this same son, frustrated by repeated job and business failures, returned home with a cutlass in hand. He planned to kill the woman who birthed him in pain and sacrifice. His reason? ” Everywhere I go, they say you are the witch blocking my destiny.” Poison, he said, would have taken too long. Her only escape was the local vigilante station.
That age woman— “Mama” —later met me again in tears: “What God told you last time is true but painfully my own children and my late husband people are after my life. They have made me sworn in many places. And ever since then nothing happened to me as they expected. Now they are saying my witchcraft is too strong for the gods of the land and all the witch doctors. Pastor, why me? See, I gave birth to seven of my children with only one wrapper on my waist because i had no one. I suffered alot to raised them but the devil doesnt want me to benefits from them. He lies! I never prayed for their downfall. If I were a witch, why didn’t I kill them in the womb?”
Her story is not isolated. It resounds across Nigeria’s villages, hamlets and cities. Sons and daughters abandon their aged parents over revelations from self-proclaimed carreer pastors and prophets, or dreams stirred by malaria, manipulations and fear, not faith. Entire generations are forsaking their roots because suspicion has become more believable than scripture. In this age of rising Pentecostalism, we crucify our mothers in the name of deliverance.
Yet the holy scripture is not silent. In Matthew 15:4, Jesus reminds us: “For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” The Apostle Paul warns in 2 Timothy 3:1-2 that in the last days, men will be “disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy.” Are we now the fulfillment of this tragic prophecy?
A.W. Tozer once said, “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.” In the same way, the essence of false witchcraft accusations is the entertainment of thoughts about our elders that are unworthy of them. This is not discernment; this is dishonour, camouflaged in spirituality.
A Nigerian proverb says, “When the roots of a tree begin to decay, it spreads death to the branches.” When we abandon our elders, we rot the family tree. “A child who does not know the value of an elder will sleep hungry in the future,” says another. And indeed, many are now spiritually starved because the oil that should have flowed from the aged has been sealed by suspicion.
Even more haunting is the true story of a young man I once knew, whose mother had passed the ninety-year mark. In her frailty and traditional habits, she preferred to cleanse herself with firewood ash, as was customary in the olden days. Rather than understand or honor her cultural integrity, her son would beat her with a cane, ordering her to bathe in the river like everyone else. This humiliation turned into rage, and her lips, trembling with pain, released curses too heavy for any heart to carry. Today, that young man walks the streets, talking to himself, his sanity fraying at the edges like a garment long abandoned. Was it the curse? Or was it the cruelty that unraveled him?
The Holy Bible is unequivocal: “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more” (Mark 4:24). We cannot sow violence upon those who nurtured us and expect peace to rule our destinies. Jesus said in Matthew 6:15, “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” What, then, becomes of a generation that has not only withheld forgiveness but replaced honour with hate?
If a president can travel abroad in old age for medical attention, should not the aged parents especially the poor ones in our communities have access to basic healthcare and dignity? If nations with lesser spiritual fervor can clothe, feed, and medically support their elderly, why must ours beg to eat? “Pure religion and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,” says James 1:27. If we cannot care for our elderly, what then is the fruit of our religion?
In the same way the officers in Italy saw a grandmother, not a burden, we must begin to see our elders not as witches, but as wells—wells of wisdom, of tears, and of generational sacrifice. Their hands may be wrinkled, but they once held us when we were helpless.
The Church must repent. The Evangelists, Pastors and prophets must be purified. Sons and daughters must be taught again to honour, not accuse. Christianity is not a religion of vengeance; it is the way of the Cross. And the Cross is not a courtroom; it is a mercy seat.
To every mother like “Mama,” exiled from the family table and tried by unholy courts, Heaven speaks on your behalf: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15).
To every child who suspects your parent, ask yourself: If she were powerful enough to destroy you now, how did you survive her womb? And if she once walked in darkness, should she not be led into light, not judgment? Jesus said, “If your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness.” The evil eye today is not in our mothers but in our misjudgments.
Let us return. Let us repent. Let us reach for the ones we left behind. Let us not only fight for the unborn, but protect those who bore us. Let us serve them ravioli if we must. Let us sit with them. For in honouring them, we honour God.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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