In the Niger Delta, where an extreme form of Christianity has taken root and blended with indigenous beliefs, an alarming number of children have been accused of practising witchcraft with malicious intent.
The accusations have created a generation of outcasts who live at the mercy of a system ill-equipped to protect them.
It is a relatively recent phenomenon that exploded across the region in the 1990s, fuelled partly by popular films and self-professed prophets looking to manipulate people's fears to make a quick buck.
The epicentre of these accusations is in Nigeria's southwestern states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River.
A report in 2008 estimated that 15,000 children in these two states had been accused.
And while there is no definitive figure for the number of skolombo in Calabar, a 2010 survey found that in one region of Akwa Ibom state, 85 percent of street children had been accused of witchcraft.
The consequences for many of them were severe.
Children and babies who have been branded as witches have been chained up, starved, beaten, and even set on fire.
Cases of parents attempting to behead their children with saws have also been reported.
These accusers typically use witchcraft as a means to scapegoat vulnerable children for acts ranging from unruly behaviour and absenteeism from school to a failed harvest or mechanical problems with the family motorbike.
"We have the laws to address witch-branding," says Nigerian lawyer James Ibor. "But the problem is not the laws - the problem is implementing these laws."
"And until we begin to implement these laws, our children are not safe."
Ibor, who runs a local organisation in Calabar called Basic Rights Counsel Initiative (BRCI), says both the country's criminal code and 2003 Child Rights Act outlaw not only degrading treatment but even accusing someone of being a witch.
But only about three-quarters of Nigeria's states have domesticated the federal version of the Child Rights Act, and to date, only the state of Akwa Ibom has included specific provisions concerning the abuse of alleged child witches.
Their 2008 law made witch-branding punishable by a custodial sentence of up to 10 years.
And 10 years on, courts have yet to successfully prosecute a single perpetrator.
Ibor says his state of Cross River has not amended its own domestic version of the Child Rights Act to explicitly criminalise witch-branding.
But Oliver Orok, the minister of sustainable development and social welfare, says his ministry is working with UNICEF to address this legislative shortcoming.
"This has been an aged long practice particularly bothering on customs and traditions, and you know habits die hard," he says. "The ministry is working assiduously to eliminate and curtail these practices."
"Ample provisions have been made in the 2018 budget to build a new home for children at risk, and those who are in conflict with the law."
The Calabar lawyer blames this partly on a lack of political will but says the lack of action primarily boils down to a lack of resources.
"The police are poorly funded, and not equipped to carry out these kinds of investigations," he says. "Often, we have to push for investigations, and sometimes you just have to pay police as they don't have the fuel they need to travel and collect evidence."
Ibor adds: "They also don't have the resources to run forensic analysis - and so most times you have to fund it yourself."
"But even if I had the money, I can't do it. The prosecution would argue I'd had the lab results altered."
Ibor also claims police often fail to act because they believe in witches, and outing them.
The lawyer gives an example of three children aged between seven and 13 who were recently branded as witches by their father.
He locked them up in a poorly ventilated storeroom without food for several days.
Ibor claims police have taken no action against the father despite the case having been reported late in May.
And in another recent episode, a man who accused his three-year-old of being a witch before giving her second-degree burns was released by a court despite confessing to the crime.
All points to child rights and witchcraft.
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