IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI examines the increasing cases of killing people for money ritual involving young people and
why the country, despite its acclaimed religiosity, has not been able to exorcise the rampaging demons possesing its youths.
They are young, but the criminality and bestiality flowing in their vein is ageless, full-blown and horrendous. Their look and frame exude innocence, but their hearts blackened by corruption. At birth, they come harmless, but as years go by, they blossom into something totally harmful. Such has been the shape and form of some children and teens in Nigeria today. The country is drenched in spirituality and religiosity, but this, investigations reveal, hasn’t been able to purge its polluted young bloods of depravities.
Searching for ‘Yahoo’ jobs
A few years back, the country’s theatre of criminalities was largely characterised by adults, but in recent times, its most terrific players have been young minds. For instance, five boys between the ages of nine and 12 were caught after breaking into a shop in the Ajegunle area of Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, recently. While confessing, the boys’ group leader who identified himself as Musa Sulaimon, said they broke into the shop at midnight. When asked why he took to crime, the boy said his parents enrolled him in a Quranic school, but he left the place and started stealing, claiming the school teachers mistreated him.
Also, two children were seen begging for forgiveness in a viral video that circulated online recently. The boys, between the ages of four and five, were alleged to have kidnapped a two-year-old boy, taken him to a bush and tied him there before they were caught. In another recent viral video, a three-year-old boy was seen surprisingly telling someone that he wanted to go into internet fraud, popularly known as Yahoo Yahoo. The boy’s frank statement became more confounding when he said he has chosen to become a Yahoo boy, because he wants to be collecting dollars. In another similar video, three boys between the ages of 14 and 15 were caught in Benin City, saying they left their parents’ house in Delta State for the Edo State capital in search of Yahoo jobs. One of the boys said he ran away from home, because his parents took him to farm every day.
Litany of ritual killings
In a worrisome show of ritual killings, a group of four teenage girls, reportedly secondary school students in Lagos, were caught earlier in February with human parts concealed inside their schoolbags. According to reports, the young girls were discovered after a taxi driver that carried them raised an alarm that he perceived foul odour from his cab, which forced residents of the area to open their bags and see fresh human heads.
Also, a few weeks back, there was national uproar when four teenagers in Ogun State were caught in the act performing money ritual after they had beheaded one of their girlfriends. The young boys who claimed they had gotten the procedures for the ritual via Facebook, were burning the young girl’s head in a pot when they were caught. Similarly, two minors, both aged 15 were caught in the act trying to use a 14-year-old girl for rituals in Bayelsa. These are just a few demographics of the height of absurdities in society today. But in the past, the situation wasn’t as dangerous as this.
Blind days, good moral standards
Many schools of thought have attributed this derailment of ethical values to a motley of factors, one of which they say is poor parenting aided by a failing system of cultural norms. Many educationists have argued that in the past, Nigeria used to be a harbinger of noble morals. They said in those so-called ‘blind’ days, parents were very interested in the activities of their children. But today, they said things are no longer the same.
Speaking with Sunday Tribune, a Lagos-based counsellor, Mrs Toyin Bakare, said: “Now, some parents care less about the whereabouts of their own children. Some have never gone to their children’s schools or workplaces, neither do they even know the friends of their own children nor their parents. Some parents see their children with money and never bother to know its source.
“Some see their daughters with expensive clothes, flashy jewelry and sophisticated phones, yet they don’t ask. Even the elders that used to be the guardians of the morals and ethics of the community in the dark ages, appear to have become forerunners of amorality and immorality nowadays. Perhaps, that’s why some of the present day youths seem to have missed the way,” she added.
A sliding economy and crimes
Meanwhile, studies have shown that socio-economic survival in modern day Nigeria is one of the factors causing wrong parenting, which findings showed, has resulted in the alarming rate of rape, incest, molestation, abortion, cultism, violence, e-fraud, illicit sex, bestiality and kidnapping among children and teenagers.
Educationists have argued that when parenting is wrongly carried out, children’s morality will often be at stake and that children tend to reflect the moral state of the community they find themselves in.
Lending credence to this, a study published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry revealed that exposing children to a community where there is significant violence can result in internalised violence and behaviour problems in them.
The study also found that if children were victims of community violence or violence at home, they are more likely to exhibit violent behaviour when they grow up. A similar study published in the Journal of Family Violence found that children who both witnessed and experienced domestic abuse were far more likely to suffer from internalized anger and behavior problems than their peers, adding that such children tend to grow up abusing others in the same way they were abused. The study also revealed that there are parents in Nigeria that currently expose their children to such a violent atmosphere, without understanding the future dangers.
Social media influence
According to Greensprings School, Lagos, social media is also affecting the way Nigerian parents bring up their children, as they tend to adopt foreign methods that may not be suitable for Nigerian culture. The school noted that some parents spend most of their time on social media and little or no time for their children, who in turn, find comfort in the arms of their mobile phones that expose them to all sorts of undignified content.
Speaking with Sunday Tribune on the impact of foreign culture on parenting in Nigeria, the president of Shadaville ministries, a Lagos-based enlightenment Centre, Dr Kunle Hamilton, noted that “Nigerian parents in their mid-40s to 60s lost the skills that helped much older generation raise more disciplined kids,” adding that: “These parents were influenced the most by Wild West movies, rogue politicians and military despots and they handed down the same psyche to their kids in the late 20s to 30s.”
He said all tiers of government are equally responsible for the poor mirroring of stolen affluence, which, he said, has compelled Nigerian youths to lust for drugs, sexual immorality and ill-gotten wealth.
He stressed that the degradation of the Nigerian courts and law enforcement agencies over the decades has made the country’s official bulldogs against crime toothless, such that the Nigerian youths easily see crime and criminals winning and that once law and order is seen to lose the battle against crime, it becomes fashionable to become criminals.
Religious leaders hailing stolen affluence
“Our religious houses and their leaders now grapple with high levels of immorality and corruption too within their ranks. They are therefore losing moral grounds in fighting the same things they are guilty off,” he further said, adding that the lasting solutions will take a while to take root and would most probably start with killing the little foxes of election rigging and votes buying in the country.
“When the Nigerian electorate stop selling their voting power for morsels of food and they begin to change regimes by honest voting and untampered results, the police, army, judiciary, etc will reorder their steps and become more effective in making crime unattractive to our youths
“In the same vein, religious houses and leaders need to wake up and start practising what they preach from their holy books. Perhaps through them too, the hearts of our youths can be weaned back from heinous crime and the get rich quick mentality,” he added.
Meanwhile, on the factors that fuel children and teenage criminality in Nigeria, criminologists have offered varied perspectives. While some of them have argued that propensity for adult criminality is often established in early childhood and that both educational and criminal trajectories are set at a very early pre-school days, others have contended that schools play crucial roles in determining the likelihood of delinquency, crime and incarceration.
Polluted definition of success
But offering his perspective, a columnist with The Guardian and Dean of Schools at the Educational Advancement Centre, Ibadan, Mr Gbenga Adebambo, attributed the rise in crimes and criminality among the youths to a polluted definition of success in the country, which he said, has been propagated by parents, entertainers, religious leaders and politicians in the country.
Speaking with Sunday Tribune, he said: “We may need to look at the issue from four angles. The first is the societal definition of success. Majorly, the entertainers have polluted the societal definition of what success is. So the youths now see success as you going to parties and spraying money and moving about in flashy cars and clothes. That is one area to look at it. The generic definition of success has been polluted.
“The second one has to do with the parents. Many of them don’t care how their children get money; all they just want is to see their children driving expensive cars and all. That’s why we can hear of incidents like the one that was reported recently whereby a teenager wanted to use his mother for a money ritual. Many parents often claim that as long as all they see with their teenage children is laptops and not guns, they are comfortable. But what they fail to understand is that the modern blood money does not involve shielding of blood alone. And that’s why someone can be typing on a laptop, but has destroyed the lives of many people right on the spot where he is working on the computer,” he explained.
According to him, “The third angle is the religious definition of success and it has to do with how the present day men of God have made youths see success. Many people often ask me why we no longer see the genuine miracles of old in today’s churches and I do tell them it can’t be, because most of the financial accounts of many churches nowadays are filled with blood money as most of those who paying bogus tithes are drug dealers, internet fraudsters and ritualists.
“Unlike before, churches now evaluate you based on how often you pay your tithe and the financial amount of the tithes you pay. So the pastors and the Imams are not helping. They rate you based on only your financial contributions to their religious organization. As long as you can give them a check of a million naira as your tithes, they don’t want to know how you make the money. And then, the religious leaders often praise only the members that give them millions and billions either as tithes or first fruits. So, they too have greatly redefined the definition of success.”
He stressed that “The last angle is the institutional definition and this encapsulates the school. And this is because we have high levels of corruption in the institutions, which also involve several arms of government. But the problem about schooling in Nigeria is that we always focus on knowledge-based learning, which entails just going to school and accumulating knowledge. But there is what we call value and character-based learning.
“In advanced countries like China, the first thing the children learn is their language and then societal ethics. So it is from a very tender age that good morals and characters are inculcated into the children. But our own school system here in Nigeria does not prioritise value-based learning. That is why a cleaner will sweep the floor of a classroom in Nigeria and the children would still go ahead to dirty and litter the class with refuse. But in those advanced countries, it isn’t like that. The students clean the classrooms themselves and have developed an attitude of keeping the classes clean. So, I believe if we can integrate value and character-based learning in our school system, we will see reduction in the involvement of children and teenagers in crimes,” he added.
Is Nollywood fuelling money ritual madness?
The federal government recently blamed the rising spate of children and youths’ involvement in crime on the movies the children watch on their television screens.
While urging filmmakers to stop promoting money ritual contents in their movies, the Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, said some money ritual suspects paraded by the police have confessed that they learnt the heinous act from movies and on social media.
The minister said, “Many have also blamed Nollywood for featuring money rituals in some of its movies, saying this has negatively influenced the vulnerable youth. To mitigate this, I have directed the National Film and Video Censors Board, the body set up to regulate the film and video industry in Nigeria, to take this issue into consideration while performing its role of censoring and classifying films and videos.
“I have also directed NFVCB to engage with stakeholders in the film industry in order to express the concerns of the government and Nigerians on the need to eschew money ritual content in their movies.”
He added that: “For those who may still be in doubt, ritual killings have assumed a worrisome dimension in recent years. Recently, in Ogun State, four young men, one of whom is 18 years old, murdered their 20-year-old female friend for money rituals. One of them said they learnt about using human parts for money rituals from social media.
“Of course, you are also aware of a case involving a female student of the University of Jos who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend for ritual purposes. These killings have been widely reported by the media. The fact that some of these ritualists said they learnt the money-making tricks from some social media platforms has given a further fillip to our campaign to rid social media of unwholesome content.”
But speaking to Sunday Tribune, popular Nollywood actress, Joke Muyiwa, offers a contrary viewpoint.
She said: “Every film of frantic content resolves on propagating the moral value of any society. If viewers watch the film calmly, they will realize that people who engage in such acts do not go unpunished. The main purpose of drama is to teach and to please. It teaches as well as instructs, informs and re-orientate viewers. Any bad act is presented, with the sole purpose to teach viewers the negative implications of such an act.”
A nation in search of a future?
Offering an Islamic perspective to the issue, the president of the Truth Revealer Islamic Movement of Nigeria (TRIMON), Raheem Tajudeen Abiola, said; “The incessant ritual killings among youngsters who are expected to face their studies, life and career but have been infected by the get rich quick syndrome has become cancerous to our society and the trending menace. If proper measures and adequate care isn’t taken, it will not only lead to us living in fear and anxiety, but it will surely amount to a disaster that would be too severe for us to bear.
He said “Islam has a religion doesn’t only frowns on the unjust, barbaric, sinful and ungodly act but condemns it in totality. Humans are one of the most precious creations of Allah and as such the blood of a single soul must not be maltreated, intimidated, dehumanized and wasted.
To remedy the situation, he said “parents should begin to create quality time to train and instill in their children values, morals and ethics that would make them behave responsibly in the society and not make them go beyond bounds.
“At the same time, they should exercise patience while anticipating to reap/benefit from the fruit of their labour. We live in a society where parents want cars and houses worth millions of naira from their children without considering or bothered about where and how they get the funds from.
He added that “As parents are making these efforts, the government needs to create an enabling environment that will promote hardwork, dedication, competence and labour. Lastly, it is a known fact that we all live in a digital world and the media has an impact on us through what we watch and listen to. The media should strive towards promoting rational, human, motivational and inspirational contents and celebrate celebrities worth celebrated.”
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