Youth involvement in ritual killings symptomatic of a failed system —Ololajulo

Dr Babajide Ololajulo, Senior Lecturer, Department of Archeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan, in this interview speaks on the sociological angle, failed parenting and way forward among other issues. 

 

What is the sociological angle to the recent rise in the involvement of youths in ritual killings?

Some of these things are not new in our society. If you set your mind back to the 90s when there was this Otokoto saga, if you still remember very well, these actually are practices enclave in the consciousness of people. The idea of occult economy is always in our society; it’s a long-standing practice, when I was in secondary school we had rumours about kidnappers being around and parents warning children not to go out as ritualists are in town, we thought this was popular imagination because nobody got to see someone that was killed and used for money ritual but the rumours were there. But nowadays, I think that it’s a different scenario.  We see corpses and evidence of crimes which makes the whole idea of ritual killing of today different from the popular imagination that it used to be in the past.

So the question basically will be, why do we have the young ones of today going a step further beyond the rumours and superstition they heard about these activities. How come they are practicing them in a way we have never seen before. For me, it’s all about societal failure, this is not just manifesting in ritual killing alone, we have seen so many activities that we never thought would happen in the past, we see them on daily basis.

So, if the youth of today can go on and implement agendas that our own generation never believed could come into existence, it simply means that there is a kind of advancement in the system which is trying to practicalise superstition. Today, we have young people who have gone a step further to actualise superstition.

I think that is where the difference is because, in the 80s and the 90s, we heard rumours about people who use human beings to make money but never got to see anyone that was used but these days we see the corpses, imagination could be left at the realm of imagination but the young ones of today are giving expression to those imaginations and that is what we can see with regards to the enormous killings we can see.

If they can be made to realise that those things don’t work the way they think, maybe they’ll stop but now to convince them is a different thing entirely.

 

Is there a place of family values in this? Has parenting failed?

That’s obvious because we are talking about a society that has completely failed in terms of its responsibilities. When I was growing up, I dared not buy a handkerchief even while in secondary school because my father would definitely ask how I got to come about the money I used to buy a handkerchief by, to talk of buying a shirt for myself but when you see a system that celebrates people without any means of income, you’ll realise that the urge of making money is now too tempting.

We have a society that has monetised values. The people that have money to throw about are celebrated. You can’t win any election in Nigeria today if you don’t have money to throw around. So, it is a case of societal failure and once the society fails, it simply moves down to the level of the family and to the individual.

All of these are symptomatic of a failed society.

Right now, everybody wants to bam-bam but nobody wants to work. That is the situation

 

Is there any way forward at all? How can we solve this?

I think the answer or solution will not be very far from what many observers will give. Value orientation. Is it possible that we have a society where material wealth will not be the sole indicator of success? Is it possible to invent a society that will put less emphasis on material wealth; a society that we give credit to other realms, such as inventions and creativity and leadership?

Is it possible to reduce the level of remuneration attached to public offices in a way that materialism will be discouraged? If people work for their money I’m sure there is going to be less demonstration of materialism but because we have a lot of free money, what I call unearned income; unearned income makes people think that those who do not have are not successful.

So, we go back even in the traditional communities, how do we reward, who do we reward as successful? Are they the ones that have huge cash to throw around or the ones that make meaningful impacts in terms of building the community substance-wise not as per throwing money around?

We should have a reward system that doesn’t talk much about material things. People should know that the best person in society is probably not the richest. We should come to a situation where no one is running after money, rather than good names.