An ongoing controversy involving Nigerian Pastor Helen Ukpabio and Nigerian singer/producer Emoseh Khamofu, popularly known as Bloody Civilian, has resulted in a lawsuit against the singer.
The controversy began when an X (formerly Twitter) user posted the pastor’s photo on Friday, November 22, 2024, with the caption, “Pastor Helen Ukpabio turns 60 today.” The tweet garnered significant attention, amassing 4.6 million views and diverse reactions.
Bloody Civilian also retweeted the post with the claim, “She literally made people burn their children alive.”
This comment sparked reactions from users online, including a response from the pastor’s daughter, Imaobong Ukpabio, demanding that Bloody Civilian delete the post within five hours or face legal action.
Imaobong Ukpabio, responding to Bloody Civilian, via X (formerly Twitter)
While many have shared their views on this ongoing issue, the underlying question is who Pastor Helen Ukpabio is and how true these accusations are.
Helen Ukpabio—The alleged witch hunter
Ukpabio’s indoctrination is said to have begun at 14 upon initiation into the Brotherhood of Cross and Star, popularly known as Olumba. During her time with this religious group, Ukpabio claims to have been a teenage witch, “betrothed to Lucifer” before being “set free by the gospel.” This qualified her to attend a spiritual school for the”Royals”, where she was taught concepts of mysticism, occultism, spirits, Satanism, and demonism.
Upon leaving in 1986, at 17, she was educated at St. George’s Catholic School in Falomo, Jinadu, an Anglican School in Obalende, as well as the Methodist Girls’ School in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria.
By 1992, Ukpabio, who was 23 at the time, had established Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria, to spread her often literal interpretations of the Bible to the people of West Africa.
The preacher and her organisation believe that Satan can manifest himself in the bodies of children by demonic possession and make them become his servants in the form of ‘witches’ or ‘wizards.’
Exploiting superstitious beliefs, particularly those related to spiritual or demonic possession or witchcraft in uncivilised locations, Ukpabio’s church grew exponentially throughout Nigeria and West Africa with major Liberty Gospel Churches in Cameroon, Ghana and South Africa as well as Nigeria.
Ukpabio published her views in several books, which have also been heavily criticised. An example is “Unveiling The Mysteries of Witchcraft,” in which she states:
“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.”
Through her film production company, Liberty Films, part of the Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries franchise, she has also produced several films to spread the view that children can become possessed by evil spirits. The most famous of these is “End of the Wicked” in which child actors are shown to eat human flesh and murder their parents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1RLTSpxzgI
To date, Ukpabio holds programs that reinforce witchcraft beliefs and incite hatred and violence against supposed witches. With programs as recent as May 2024, the self-acclaimed evangelist and witch hunter, continues to minister at church events mostly in Calabar, Cross River state Nigeria.
Real-life consequences of Ukpabio’s teachings
“My youngest brother died. The pastor told my mother it was because I was a witch. Three men came to my house and they beat me,” Mary Sudnad, who was ten at the time, narrates her ordeal. She shared how they picked poisonous “asiri” berries, forced them down Mary’s throat, and threatened to kill her by barbed-wire hanging. Finally, her mother threw boiling water and caustic soda over her head and body, before her father dumped his screaming daughter in a field.
Gerry, who was picked out by the “prophetess” at a prayer night and named a witch, shares how his mother cursed him and his father siphoned petrol from his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old’s face. Even with his visible facial blistering, he continues to ask every adult he sees if they will take him home to his parents: “It’s not them, it’s the prophetess, I am scared of her.”
Sam Ikpe-Itaum, who opened his house as a shelter to children ostracised and abandoned by their families after being accused of witchcraft by Ukpabio, shares the story of siblings Prince, four, and Rita, nine, during an interview with The Guardian.
According to him, Rita had shared her dream of a lovely party with lots to eat and drink. With beliefs from Ukpabio that a witch flies away to the coven at night while the body sleeps, Rita’s sweet dream was proof enough: she was a witch, and because she had shared food with her sibling—the way witchcraft is spread–both were abandoned.
Critics of Ukpabio
In 2007, an Observer newspaper article claimed Ukpabio and other evangelical pastors were encouraging an upsurge in the number of children being accused of witchcraft and being abused and stigmatised by parents and communities as a result.
Again in 2008, the TV news documentary “Dispatches Saving Africa’s Witch Children” by UK broadcaster Channel 4 stated the views that Ukpabio expresses have led to a massive upsurge in children stigmatised and abandoned by their families in West Africa, particularly in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.
Both reports followed the activities of two charities, the Child Rights And Rehabilitation Network (CRARN) and Steppi parents have rejected them for displaying what they believed to be signs of witchcraft, assertions which the Associated Press has also made. The accusation and her defence against them have been reported in The New York Times.
Humanist Leo Igwe, also spoke out against Ukpabio’s actions. As a result, his 2009 conference in Nigeria against local witchcraft with Stepping Stones and the Nigerian Humanist Movement in Calabar, Cross River State, was violently disrupted by members of Ukpabio’s organisation. “They invaded the venue, beat me up and stole my personal belongings. While the police were still investigating the matter, Helen Ukpabio and her church members went to court,” Igwe recounted. Ukpabio also filed a suit for $1.3 million against the government for allowing the police to protect Igwe’s group and for depriving them of the right to believe in witchcraft. However, the suit was promptly dismissed.
The Home Office has prevented her from entering Great Britain by revoking her visa after calls from campaigners in 2014 that she be banned from Britain on child protection grounds.
Libel suit against her critics
In 2014, Ukpabio brought a libel case against the British Humanist Association (BHA) and Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network (WHRIN), seeking damages of £500,000,000. She claimed that the BHA misrepresented her by saying that she ascribed certain behaviours in children to Satanic possession when, in fact, she attributed them to possession by “witchcraft spirits.” She lost this suit.
Ukpabio also used smears against other groups critical of her actions, notably the non-governmental organisation Safe Child Africa. In May 2010, she defended herself saying that the organisation exaggerates or invents the problem of child abandonment. When asked how she could be so sure, she said, “because I am an African!”
Bloody Civilian slammed with lawsuit
Following Bloody Civilian’s viral tweet, Ukpabio sued the artist for alleged defamation, demanding N200 billion in damages. This was stated in a letter dated November 25, 2024, which Bloody Civilian retweeted on Saturday, November 23, 2025.
In the letter, the Akwa Ibom-born pastor, through her legal counsel—Victor Ukutt and Co. Legal Practitioners—issued the demand under the title, “Demand for Public Apology and Compensation for the Libel of Imaobong Elijah Ukpabio and Apostle Helen Ukpabio.”
Signed on behalf of the firm by Ukutt, Bloody Civilian’s tweets were described as “reckless, satanic, and libellous.”
The letter alleged that Bloody Civilian’s statements implied that Ukpabio promotes the killing of children labelled as witches, uses her teachings to encourage exorcism, leading to child abuse, abandonment, and death, and is unfit to live in a decent society.
They have also demanded that the singer immediately retract the false libellous publications and tender a public apology, which should be “published in ten Nigerian national dailies and international news media like CNN, Aljazeera, Fox News.”
The suit also asked that the retraction of the false libellous publications be published on the internet via her social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter).
This is a developing story
