POLICE in Lagos said this week they have released two dogs after failing to find evidence they had been transformed from children by witchcraft. A police unit in the Oko-Oba, Agege, district of the city last month detained 13 members of a vigilante gang who had beaten up and were about to lynch a man after rumours he had used magic to turn two missing schoolchildren into dogs. After some fighting, they detained the mob, the beaten-up man and the dogs and held all of them for investigation. Belief in witchcraft, including the power of humans to turn into animals and plants and to transform or remove body parts at will, is widespread in Nigeria and such incidents are regularly reported in the press. – AFP