The Yahoo in us all: Whose conscience have we not scammed?

She said: “Praise the Lord”, we chorused: “Hallelujah”. It was a thanksgiving Sunday, during which time is allotted to testimonies. Mama was in her mid-70s and we knew from past testimonies that she could not be rushed. But that day, she appeared to be in a hurry. She went straight to her testimony. “I want make una help me to thank Osanobua, Obanosogie, Obanosoba, Okutatebite”. We clapped.  She continued. “The thing wey God do for me dey make me happy. Na yesterday dem call me say Iyobosa don cross”. A section of the congregation clapped again. Some of us who were not workers and understood what she meant by “Iyobosa don cross”, giggled. The Ministers’ stand went dead. The Parish Pastor, a no-nonsense  Urhobo man, shifted in his chair; his countenance changed as his eyes dilated. The Minister in charge of testimony that morning was fidgeting on the altar. Something must be done to stop Mama. She must not be allowed to continue with her testimony. Everybody knew the direction she was going.

How do you allow such a testimony that interrogates the morality of the Church and a dent on the Holy name of the Almighty God? The minister interrupted mama. “Iye, we don hear you. God don hear you too”, the minister said, signaling to the usher to collect the microphone from mama, just as the Head Usher  signaled to the technical unit to switch off the microphone connection.  Mama yielded the microphone to the usher, after uttering some words in Benin dialect. The church was silent for a moment. Then the testimonies continued. And when that was over, and other programmes of service followed, it was time for the message. The parish pastor mounted the pulpit.  I took a bet in my mind: the pastor would change his prepared message.  He must say something on the “Iyobosa don cross”. He did not disappoint.

“Before I go into the message of today, I want to say that beginning from next month, all testifiers must first share their testimonies with a minister, who will hear them and decide on which testimony will be allowed. This is the house of the Lord. We cannot sit down here and begin to listen to testimonies such as the one we just heard. ‘Iyobosa don cross’ is not the type of testimony a true child of God should be sharing. We cannot be in sin and ask for the  grace of God to abound. Iyobosa crossed to where? To do what?”. He asked rhetorically. We laughed.  The pastor got enraged. “This is not funny. As children of God, we cannot take delight in immortality”. He ended the message by asking the entire congregation to pray for the mercy of God. We did and the service ended.

What is the import of “Iyobosa don cross”, such that it became the subject of a whole sermon. The expression, as given by mama, was to glorify the name of the God Almighty,  who made it possible for Iyobosa, mama’s daughter, to successfully cross from Libya to Spain and later Italy, where she has gone to seek for the elusive greener pasture. As was the vogue in the late 90s and early 20s, especially in the Niger Delta region, the joy of every family was to have a child, preferably,  a female, travel to Italy. The situation was so bad that at a time, the Italian Embassy in Nigeria,  wrote to the states’ Houses of Assembly to complain about the activities of Nigerians, who engaged in prostitution and other serial immoralities in the European country. Being an ‘Italo’, a euphemism for returnee Nigerian prostitutes from Italy, rather than attract opprobrium from the society, became a bragging right.

For instance, along Upper Sokponba Road in Benin City, there is a bus stop  called, “Edollar Ewuawa”. The name was the expression given by a man, who sent his wife to Italy in the early 90s. The woman, at a time, returned with her Italian ‘husband’ to the embarrassment of the man’s family members. But the real husband was the least bothered. Why? The two-storey building by the bus stop was built from the dollars the woman sent home from Italy. So when the noise from the family members became too much, the man simply told his family members that “dollar does not forbid taboos”. Hence, the name, “Edollar Ewuawa”. The man lived happily with his wife and her Italian ‘husband’, while their holiday in Benin lasted and they returned to Italy. The building, built from the proceeds of the sexual immoralities in far away Italy is still standing to the credit of the man and his wife.

The issue of moral decadence, especially,  when it comes to the issue of money, is as old as humanity. What we are possibly expressing now, with the issue of killing for money rituals, is just an advanced stage of immorality. For our Lord, Jesus Christ, to fulfill His destiny of the redemption of mankind, he had to be betrayed by one of His disciples,  Judas Iscariot, who collected  thirty pieces of silver  to give his master the kiss of death. Even the Holy Book, records it in the book of  Ecclesiastes 10:19 that “… money answereth all things”. The same Bible, however, in another section, 1Timothy 6:10, warns that “For the love of money is the root of all evil”. While the Holy Book recognises in one breath that making money is good, it, in another breath, warns that the love of it sits pretty well at the foundation of all evil deeds. As the preachers are wont to expatiate,  it is not the love of money that causes one to do evil, it is the covetousness of it that makes one to deny the faith and go the extra mile to acquire money, as expressly stated in the last part of the quoted Bible verse “which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows”.

The issues of “Yahoo Boys, Yahoo Plus and HK”, are not social problems that just hit us all suddenly. No. The Nigerian society gradually moved into this present level of moral decadence, which has reached a bestial level, where  sucklings now kill to make money. The last three weeks have really demonstrated to us that  hell itself is far better than the society we live in now. We all read the news of the teenager, Sofia Kehinde, 17, who was murdered by her boyfriend and fellow teenagers between the ages of 17 and 19.

The foursome did not just kill Sofia, they decapitated her and had her head in a ritual pot for money making charms. You  may want to ask, if the four had succeeded and actually made good money, how would they have explained their source of wealth to society? What would have been the reactions of their parents, if they suddenly turned up in their various homes with exotic cars and flashy handsets? What about their mosques; would the Chief Imam have prayed for them and thanked the Almighty Allah for being benevolent?

The answers are not too far away. The society we live in  now does not interrogate abnormalities. If those boys had succeeded, churches and mosques would have collected their “love and thanksgiving offerings”. Religious centres would have collected tithes from them and there would have been special benedictions for them, offered by the Most Senior Apostle or Chief Imam. Their parents would probably have gone to testify, like “Iyobosa don cross”, to thank God who has made the children “hammer”. Years back, a church collected a N10 million tithe from an account clerk in a five star hotel without asking any question. We are in the age of prosperity, where Mammon  gives His children wealth “abundantly”. Parents nowadays supervise house building projects for their children who are still undergraduates. Many parents ask their children to go “and see what your mates are doing”. Check it out and you will be shocked at the  number of parents who are living in houses built by their children and driving posh cars from same children who neither attended any school nor learnt any trade. “The blessings of the Lord maketh  rich” is the fad now.

On Radio Oyo in those good old days, there was this ethical orientation hype with the words: “eri oju ole e o mu. Omo yin o gbin koko, o ngba gbà aale…”- you know who the thief is but you simply refuse to arrest him. Your child has no cocoa plantation, yet he is borrowing money to be paid back during harvest. How many parents ask such questions nowadays?. As parents, don’t we make ways in our homes for parking spaces for the cars our teenage children are bringing home? How do you explain a child in the university, paying the school fee of his or her younger siblings? How many Iyobosas have crossed in our families? How many “Osaro don hammer” do we have as nephews,  cousins and neighbours? Which society abandons its moral values like we do and will not have killer kids and ritualists in abundance?

A lot has been said about the role of the nation’s music industry and Nollywood in the abnormalities of ritual killings, blood money and what have you. I have no problem with those pushing for that and blaming artistes for churning out questionable contents. But can we go a step further and ask if we don’t have agencies which are saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that only morally edifying content hits our airwaves? If we blame  Nollywood for the money ritual  productions, what do we say to the Director-General of the National Film Censors Board, who allowed the content to be aired? If a child kills another for ritual because he sees such a scene in a  film, don’t we know that the first ritual killer is the man who permitted such a scene to be part of the film?

It is sad that we are at this level. Like the evangelists of yore used to sing: “gbogbo wa lalowo nbe, gbogbo wa lalowo nbe, bi igbagbo se da loni gbogbo wa lalowo nbe” – we are all guilty, we are all guilty of what faith has turned into. As long as we see children living far above the acceptable limits of comfort for their ages and we fail to  raise the red flag, we are all Yahoo Boys, or Yahoo fathers and Yahoo mothers. As long as we are interested in the total amount of offerings and tithes collected without an interrogation of the sources, our religious centres are Yahoo centres. As long as we are interested only in the Zakat, without asking how the benevolent  donors made their money, we are blood money ritualists. This is not the time to blame others. It is time to take collective actions before our towns and cities become inhabitable  for us and our children.
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Abayomi Oduntan: Teacher, moulder @ 60

On Sunday, February 6, 2022, my old secondary school teacher, Mr. Abayomi Olugbenga Oduntan, turned 60 years old. Mr. Oduntan came into the then Araromi High School (now Odo-Oro High School) as a National Youth Corps,  NYSC, member in the 1984/85 academic session. He was assigned to teach us Government. Within days after he took over the  subject, we became friends, and he practically adopted me as a brother. We maintained the line of communication after his NYSC programme, through letters.

Mr. Oduntan followed my academic career through the university. When the time came for me to look for job, he gave me my baptism of fire in journalism, when he sent me to meet one Mr. Ashafa in The Guardian. For six months, I was on the Transport beat of The Guardian, under the tutelage of another wonderful soul, the late Mr. Remi Oyelegbin, as a Reportorial Test Candidate. The beat has not stopped since then.

In the last 38 years, after our paths first crossed, I have come to know Oga Oduntan as not just a forthright man, but an epitome of humility.  I recall here, how, when visiting Benin, while he worked with Shell Petroleum, he insisted that he would sleep in my modest accommodation. While I was seeing the “big man” in him as he slept on  the simple mattress in my little living room, he had some indelible words for me: “every man has days  of little beginning”. Men like him are rare to find in these days of the rat race.

I heartily congratulate you for witnessing the Diamond Jubilee while beseeching God to grant you more years in peace and splendour.  Hin a pe sir!