Pandemic Of Ritual Killings For Money Making

Kogiflame
BY BAYO OLUWASANMIFEB
In Nigeria today, we live in a culture of death, of human degradation of vain-glory and cynical denigration of our fellow beings.
Nigerians are living a life that is, to quote Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short.” As Timothy Adegoke the graduate student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife a victim of ritual killing for money making who was murdered at Adedoyin’s Hilton Hotel and Resorts, Ile-Ife, was being laid to rest, three young men in Abeokuta – Wariz Oladehinde 17, Abdul Gafar Lukman 19, and Mustakeem Balogun 20, were arrested for killing Rofiat, a girlfriend of their friend for money making ritual.
What’s responsible for pandemic of ritual killings for money making especially among our youths? Who are the people responsible for this? All indicators in Nigeria show that Nigerian youths are worse off today than at any time in our history. The reasons are obvious: high rate of unemployment, delinquency, substance abuse, poverty, teenage pregnancy, bad role models, and hopelessness. The politicians, pastors, parents, and Nollywood actors are to blame.
In Nigeria, the government is run by corrupt, wicked, and heartless politicians. They believe the lives of youths are not precious. They are not obligated to properly nourish the youths physically, culturally, morally, and academically. Our government at all levels failed to ensure quality universal education, employment opportunities, promote inventions and infrastructure, eliminate hatred, oppression, and ethnic discrimination. Our government pursues and promotes pauperism, ignorance, and barbarism, instead of comfort, intelligence, job creation, combination of action and civilisation. The politicians openly engage in ritual killings so they could win elections.
All that Nigerian pastors, especially the influential prosperity preachers, preach is money, money, money. The youths see them only from that angle more so with their sleek, beautiful, exotic jets and cars. The youths want to be like them. For the pastors, message of salvation, uprightness, kindness, be “thy brother’s keeper” will not make them rich. Some pastors are involved in ritual killings for ‘aworo’ meaning juju to populate their churches because the more people, the more money that comes to the church coffers. Others claim the power to divinely move money from “heaven’s bank” to people’s bank account.
The parents are equally guilty. Like the youths, the parents are trapped in the cycle of poverty. They welcome any means that will free them from the trajectory of generational poverty. They embrace and celebrate any financial “breakthrough and miracle.” The dominant movie genre in Nollywood is how to get rich quick through ritual killings. The youths act out the Nollywood script for ritual killings for money.
The real source of wealth of a country is the youths. For any country to prosper and progress, it must invest in improving the condition of life of its youths including their minds and culture. For Nigeria to advance with productive youths, the government should invest in educational and scientific institutions, the arts, job creation, improved agriculture, safe housing, and opportunities in various sectors.
Since Nigeria has failed abysmally to fulfill its social contract with the Nigerian people, I’m more than convinced that elections conducted based on the fraudulent 1999 Constitution, are not the solution to pandemic ritual killings for money. Dissolution of Nigeria is the answer. When we go our separate ways, we’ll be able to forge a new Yoruba Nation with a new vision, new brains, new culture, new template, new Constitution and a new democracy. That’s the only way out!
bjoluwasanmi@gmail.com