Anambra State Government has concluded arrangements to count and register all the herbalists and spiritualists in the state to stop charms for kidnappings and other crimes in the society.
The decision by the government was taken during the State Executive Council meeting presided over by Governor Chukwuma Soludo.
The Commissioner for Information, Mr Paul Nwosu, who said this in a statement on Wednesday in Awka, after the meeting, added that the government wanted to use such a method to eliminate criminally-minded elements.
He explained that having discovered that some native doctors provide charms with which gunmen operate, it had become necessary to enumerate and register them as practitioners categorised into herbalists and spiritualists.
He said, “While government appreciates the fact that some of them add value to health care, it is also not unaware that they have helped to imbue these criminals with the dare-devil confidence that has driven them into committing despicable crimes.”
Such crimes, according to Nwosu, were, kidnapping, extortion of ransom, and beheading, adding where they were found culpable in such crimes, it would be easy to fish them out from the register.