A Brazil Non-Governmental Organization,
headed by a certain Leonardo Rochas Dos-
Santos, has been discovered to be running a
huge scam in the name of helping child
witches in Akwa Ibom State, the South-
South region of Nigeria. A former Local
Government Council Member of Esit Eket,
Honourable Ette Udoh, told our
reporter during an interview in Uquo, the
Headquarters of Esit Eket Local Government
Area (LGA).
The Esit Eket erstwhile council member
revealed that Leo Dos-Santos, who has a
tourist visa and falsely claimed to be a
pastor, was laid off as a Help Desk/Support
Technician for a company in London; and
travels to Nigeria every quarter of the year
to shoot videos and documentaries of
children of Akwa Ibom origin purported to
be witch stigmatized, premieres and sells
them in different countries in the Europe
and makes millions of pounds. A visit to
his website,
www.waytothenations.org reveals several
videos and documentaries of children
speaking different Akwa Ibom languages.
.
He said the quest for greener pasture, or
otherwise of the dearth of profitable jobs in
their home country has inundated Nigeria,
particularly Akwa Ibom State with bogus
missionary and social workers who
capitalized on the common social problem
in the state, such as abandoned or witch
children to hump up millions of pounds
every year without solving the said
problem.
Also speaking, a community leader and
titled Chief in Ikpa Town, Esit Eket L.G.A
Obong Bassey Akpentun disclosed that, in
2012, Mr. Leo Dos Santos approached the
Proprietor of James 1:27 Orphanage Home,
Bishop Evans Udo Ekaisong in Ikpa, Esit
Eket, for partnership. After the partnership
deal was struck, Mr. Dos Santos, who
claimed he was only there to support the
children, suddenly went and published on his
website that he had acquired the children
home and was now the owner of the
orphanage. When the Bishop got wind of
this and questioned Dos Santos on the
rationale behind such development, he lied
through his teeth that he was doing so in
order to garner more international support
for the Bishop and the orphanage.
Chief Akpentun explained that unknown to
the Bishop, the self-acclaimed Brazilian
pastor had written to all the international
donors and supporters of James1:27
Orphanage to channel all the resources and
support to him and provided forged
documents to back up his claims. Chief
Akpentun called on the government to
investigate what he described as "fraudulent
and sharp practice" by some foreign based
NGO and charity workers, whose major
intent is to exploit the child witch issue in
Nigeria to feather their nests, including the
Brazilian child witch scammer, Leo Santos.
When support for the Orphanage began to
dwindle drastically, Mr. Dos Santos
broached the Bishop, this time round, to sell
the orphanage to him; but Bishop Udo-
Ekaisong rejected his offer. Mr. Dos Santos
therefore went on a maligning rampage,
blackmailing the Bishop and his orphanage
to these foreign supporters to ensure that
the Bishop and the orphanage do not get
support any longer. Some of the documents
obtained to that effect cannot be published
due to the profane, derogatory and obscene
language contained therein, but can be
made available strictly on demand.
Nonetheless, Mr. Dos Santos trickily does
this by sending secret and private messages
to these supporters and donors; knowing
that since he is white-skinned or from the
western nation, they will believe and honour
his coded information. Investigation,
however, confirmed that, one of such donor
of the James 1:27 Orphanage contacted by
Leo Dos Santos was an American
missionary and philanthropist, Rev (Mrs.)
Judy Grim.
The hashtags here are that, the children of
James 1:27 Orphanage are now deprived of
#support and #food. These are the same
children Leo Santos claimed he came all
the way from Brazil to support and groom.
When we visited the James 1:27 Orphanage
in Ikpa Town, Esit Eket, normal business
was, no doubt, going on as children were
receiving learning from their various classes
from the volunteers; but the Bishop was
said to have traveled out of the State. A
senior community member and volunteer of
the orphanage, Ms. Maria Okpo, said she
was not competent enough to speak on
behalf the orphanage with regards to the
face-off and or otherwise of the duplicity by
Mr. Dos-Santos. She however, caveated
that the Bishop might not be open to
speaking to the media on the matter as it
was still sub-judice.
In the interim, our reporters discovered that
the Brazilian, Mr. Leonardo Dos Santos,
having successfully duped Bishop Evans
Udo-Ekaisong and the witch stigmatized
children in this orphanage, went ahead and
rented a small apartment in Ikot Ibiok, Eket,
Akwa Ibom State where he gathered
children from various questionable sources
and kept as a similar orphanage and uses
them to advertise and makes millions of
pounds to line his pocket.
Checks with the Brazilian Taxpayers
Registry of the Ministry of Federal Finance
("CNPJ/MF") show that Way to the Nations
has never filed any tax returns as required
by law; neither has it made public its annual
financial report as a charity organization
which it claims. Effort to speak to Mr. Dos
Santos did not yield any results as he was
said to have returned back to Brazil, where
he will then travel to London to premiere his
new child witch documentary, neither was
his UK phone responded to our calls and
SMS.
When we revisited the purported Way To
The Nations Children Centre runs by
Leonardo Rochas Dos Santos two weeks
later to speak to the Nigerian coordinator,
Mrs. Diana-Abasi Udua-Akanimo, we met
fierce-looking local security man who hinted
that Mrs. Udua-Akanimo was under labour
and was admitted in an Intensive Care Units
(ICU) in an undisclosed hospital in Eket. We,
however, saw some white men who spoke
Portuguese language and barely understand
English as they merely gestured their hands
on us as compliments.
By: Aniebiet John, Uyo.
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