If the case of the four teenage ritualists who decapitated17-year-old Sofiat Pelumi and were caught in the process of burning her head in Abeokuta, Ogun State, has left you thoroughly perplexed, you are in good company. The story has seized the national imagination, and treatises are still being crafted documenting our social slide, the collapse of family and cultural values, and the abdication of humanity. In Nigeria, money ritualism signifies occult manipulations for money making; in short, money magic, a form of dark practice geared at the creation of sudden wealth. In this piece, I unmask the different facets of money magic in Nigeria and show that the fabled “money ritual” that Nigerians harp on is only the lowest cline of money magic in this abundantly blessed but criminally managed country of ours.
Do we have a federal republic of ritualists? Well, take a ride with me on the money train. But before anything, please note that today’s generation is about money and plenitude. O po yeye, o po pa! (It’s plenteous, it’s plenteous to breaking point!), the society exclaims, and there’s no time for querying how the money is made. As pop singer Davido quipped in the spirit of the age, “Life is all about the money.” Now, the first facet of money ritual in this country is Raw Demonism (RD), the kind that uses human parts to mint money. This is the practice alleged to have dispatched Timothy Adegoke, an MBA student at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, to Hades, and the kind responsible for the Ogun case. It’s the lowest form of money magic in Nigeria, which is why ritualists are never listed among Nigeria’s wealthiest (wo)men. The operators work codedly: they dare not show their face in the open.
Then you have Politics, the principal province of money ritualism in Nigeria. Politicians harvest the biggest billions in the country. A current, over-moneyed billionaire presidential aspirant was reportedly living in a two-bed room apartment in 1998, just before the military handed over power. Today, he rules the world of money magic through the most dastardly stealing mechanism in the world: politics. If becoming a billionaire overnight through politics is not money ritualism, then what is it? Money magic in politics has three facets: budgetary rituals, security votes and contract awards. Lawmakers connive with members of the executive to mint money in magical numbers. Rather strangely, a governor once caught in a money ritual moment stuffing hard currency (proceeds of crime) into his robe recently vowed to sign the death warrant of a thief who kidnapped and killed his pupil to make money. The irony! At an advanced level, both the would-be executioner and the suspect are co-ritualists: the difference lies only in the mode of operation. It is one of degree, not of kind. They’re both hunting in the same bush.
The next facet is Crime (C), a thriving industry subdivided into kidnapping and drug peddling. Kidnapping by Fulani herdsmen rakes in billions on a monthly basis. For instance, this week, residents told BBC Hausa that 13 villages in the Birnin-Gwari area of Kaduna State had been forced to pay terrorists N45m for their safety. A man who paid N200k said the ransom was raised by levying each household, with some having to borrow. This week, too, Fulani terrorists abducted 10 persons from a farm at Ayede Ogbese in Ondo State, demanding N100m ransom. With regard to drugs, money flows like a river, and the (wo)men in uniform regularly collect commission from barons.
Third, we have Religious Mercantilism (RM), which takes in the mega church industry. How many lawyers ride private jets in this country? They are probably not up to five. But the number of General Overseers in possession of private jets is staggering, and in fact a G.O recently boasted that two plots of land could not contain him anywhere in the world, and that he had given out over 100 cars. The G.O system is an extremely lucrative form of money ritual; it is o po yeye writ large. The G.Os own expensive edifices: some cost as much N100 billion. Because they are money magicians, the G.Os ride the most exotic cars in the world, from buggatis to Limos and Lamborghinis. Source of money: offerings by criminals and elaborate scams, including book publishing and land grabbing. The G.Os are master realtors.
Next, we have the Civil/Public Service, a veritable platform for money magic. The books at the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the government have never been correct, and if you doubt my analysis, then tell me how just two civil servants were able to acquire the 301 houses recently recovered from them by the ICPC. Through irregular award of contracts, dubious spending, unapproved allowances, payment for services not executed and payment without voucher, civil/public servants perform some of the most advanced money rituals in the country. News: 27 MDAs failed to account for N323.5 billion in 2019 alone.
You want to bam bam? You want to chill with the Big Boys? Then join government regulatory and enforcement agencies which go after Yahoo boys and (wo)men. Per the report of the Auditor-General of the Federation, one of them is the most fraudulently run agencies of the Federal Government. It refuses to abide by financial disclosure rules and wallows in filth. Yahoo boys have a better inventory of assets—you can easily track their cars, houses and girlfriends on social media. Finally, you have the Oil Merchants, the operators of illegal refineries, an industry spearheaded by Niger Delta felons, military and policemen, and politicians at different levels. They are the ones who have buried Nigeria’s fifth largest city, Port Harcourt, in soot, dispensing disease and death at will. It is the industry of “too much money.”
And so my thesis is this: from politicians to herders and G.OS, and from civil servants to oil merchants, Nigeria nurtures a vast network of money magicians that would make even Lucifer green with envy. That being the case, it is illiterate to focus squarely on the RD (Raw Demonism) operators, the lowest operators on the money magic plane. The surgery must be clinical.
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