Nigeria, a continental giant, one of the most populated black nation in the world, a country full of human, and natural resources, a State blessed with vibrant and energetic youth is turning into an abyss of ritual killings.
Ritual killings in Nigeria, have become a glorified norm. Nigeria has become a safe aboard for ritual killers. What use to be an abomination in Nigeria, has become a way of life.
It has proven that life in Nigeria is short, brutish and painful, as the nation is plaguing into notoriety as a country of killers.
The latest is the gruesome murder of 24 year old Salome Adaidu who was murdered by a gospel musician Timileyin Awen her boyfriend in his house at Papalana area in Karshi Karu local government area of Nasarawa State, north-central Nigeria.
Also in Calabar South, the Cross River State capital, a man identified as Christian Eyo, was arrested for beheading his aunt. He, according to reports allegedly kept the severed head in his room. Though he claimed that he killed his aunt because she seduced him, investigation revealed that his action was linked to rituals killings.
Earlier last year, it was also reported that a youth Musa Hamza, 22, was arrested in Bauchi for allegedly beheading a teenager and dismembering , and burying the body parts in a shallow grave reportedly for rituals.
Recall that on New Year’s Day, of 2023 the corpse of a missing 300-level undergraduate of the University of Jos, Jennifer Anthony, was killed, later she was found mutilated at a hotel, including her eyes missing. The alleged ritual killer, Moses Oko, 20, was nabbed a few days later in Makurdi, Benue State, and it turned out to be her boyfriend.
The list is inexhaustible, the rate, at which this crimes is growing in Nigeria is unpalatable, disgusting and shameful, as it has completely taken over our national affairs.
The underlying factor responsible for the carnibalistic tendency, is desperation on the part of our young ones who are eager to get rich quick.
Family neglences, moral bankruptcy, core cultural values have not beign re-enforced in many Nigerian households and families.
Religious centers, clergy who often speak and remphazied on the need to get rich quick are amongst some of the reasons for money rituals. For instance, many Nigerian churches, tell it members to make quick money and sometimes tag it as miracle money.
Now is not the time to issues blames, sit on the fence and lament. It requires serious drastic measures from across all sectors and works of life.
For us as a nation to get rid of ritual killings, we must restructure our values, religious leaders should stop teaching messages of prosperity but instead reimbibed messages of strong christians faith, teaching messages of love as well as encourage peaceful existence, and hard work.
Family should reorient their members on the need to get rich legitimately, as well as discouraging the tendency to get rich quick.
As the scriptures put it “those who are eager to become rich will not remain innocent”.
The government on their part, should arrest, and prosecute individuals who amass so much unexplainable money, they can do this by freezing such bank accounts, confiscating illegal properties, as well as deal decisively with those culpable of money rituals.
