Ayamelum: Anambra Council Area Where Native Doctors Are Councilors

RAYMOND OZOJI reports

Grapevine stories alleging that native doctors are councilors in Ayamelum Local Government Area of the state have received credence from the lawmaker representing Ayamelum state constituency Hon. Bernard Udemezue. 

Udemezue who spoke to HEADLINE NEWS exclusively in Awka recently, confirmed that the likelihood of native doctors being government officials in his constituency was not in doubt because his constituents were predominantly traditional religious worshippers and traditional medicine practitioners with virtually every home having their own deities and gods.

Udemezue who is the House of Assembly Committee Chairman on Homeland Affairs, explained that traditional religion still occupied a vantage position in the lives of his people and there were chances that some of the traditional worshippers were councilors representing various political wards, which he said was not against the law as enshrined in the new homeland security laws. 

Although he said he was a christian but being a native doctor, according to him, was not against the laws of the state. He said it would rather being unfair to generalise that all the native doctors and traditional worshippers in his constituency were into things that were against the provisions of the law of the state. 

The lawmaker further explained that in the eyes of the law being a native doctor was not an issue but the issue is what the individual does with such practices. He said if one prepared charms for kidnappers, armed robbers, unknown gunmen and other criminal elements then such individual becomes an enemy of the state and the law will come after him even as he said it was also not an offense for one not to be a christian.  

Udemezue who disclosed that the major infrastructural problem in Ayamelum were roads, emphasized that his constituency was not known for evil traditional practices as they barely have incidence of kidnappings except for herdsmen menaces. He said that they don't tolerate evil in Ayamelum and they are still a homogeneous society without security threats because security, according to the lawmaker, is a collective business. 

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