THE ROASTED CHILD
By: Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos
Among the Esan people there lingers a chilling tale — the story of the roasted child. It is not told to amuse but to wound the conscience, not to entertain but to awaken.
A woman, before leaving for the stream to wash her clothes, entrusted her little child to a neighbour. With the tenderness of a mother, she pleaded: “If the child becomes hungry, please roast yam for him until I return.” Yet upon her return, she found not the fragrance of yam roasted on the hearth but the horrifying spectacle of her own child, roasted in place of the yam.
Her cry broke the silence of the village. In anguish she sang her dirge, summoning the community to witness the unspeakable: “What is evil must be forbidden! I asked for yam to be roasted for my child, but instead, my neighbour roasted my child for yam.”
This tale is more than an old fable preserved in the corridors of memory. It is a living metaphor that reverberates through generations. For even in our age, men and women still roast children for yam. We roast children for yam when education, meant to be a lamp for the young, is traded away for quick profit, leaving tender minds in darkness.
We roast children for yam when healthcare is neglected, and the innocent die for want of medicine while others feast on excess. We roast children for yam when greed outweighs justice, when policies meant to safeguard tomorrow are mortgaged for the pleasures of today. We roast children for yam when families, through neglect or selfishness, fail in their sacred duty to nurture the fragile blossoms entrusted to them.
The roasted child, then, is not merely the child of one grieving woman. It is every child stripped of dignity, every youth denied opportunity, every generation betrayed by the guardians of its destiny. This parable does not leave us in comfort. It holds up a mirror, asking each heart: Do you roast yam for the child, or do you roast the child for yam? One choice sustains the future, the other consumes it.
In the end, the story is not about a neighbour’s cruelty long ago. It is about us, here and now. It asks us whether we shall choose to preserve innocence, protect the vulnerable, and nourish the future — or whether, through negligence, greed, and blindness, we shall become the generation that roasted its own tomorrow.
Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Uromi and a Lecturer at CIWA, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
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