Rise of youth immoralists

Morality is in advanced stage of decay among a section of our youthful populace in Nigeria, and its putrid smell is choking life and feeling out of society. Citizens are in shock over the bold-faced bestiality that characterises the trend, with many mulling the question: where and when did we leave our humanity behind? The entire society itself has lost moral compass and came a long way to this point, as concerted erosion of ethics over the years has bred an emergent generation of   heartless immoralists now on the prowl and heralding the death of humanism. Society is at crossroads and in frantic quest for a redemptive path to moral rebirth. Only that the quest is a long way back to sanity. 

Many Nigerians were horrified when the police in Abeokuta, early last week, paraded four youngsters accused of having killed and beheaded a girl for ritual purposes. The youngsters, aged 18 to 20 years, were caught penultimate Saturday dawn burning the severed head of their victim – a girl named Rofiat and said to be a lover of one of them – allegedly to make money ritual. A security guard in the community in Oke Aregba area of the Ogun State capital had noticed the four boys burning the suspected human head in a local pot and tipped off the police, whose operatives swooped on the suspects and initially arrested three of them, with the boyfriend fleeing the scene but was soon arrested. In a video clip that went viral on social media, one of the suspects led police personnel to the building where Rofiat’s decapitated body was recovered along with the weapons used in cutting off her head. It was one chilling sight as he unfeelingly unveiled the headless body in a sack where it was packed, oozing fresh blood onto the floor. Following his arrest, the boyfriend, 18-year-old, said he learnt the ritual procedure on Facebook when he typed in ‘How to make money ritual’ and was taken to a link that instructed him to behead a female and burn the skull in a local pot. He confessed to conspiring with his friend to lure the victim to their apartment where she was killed, saying they decided on engaging in money ritual because they wanted to ride exotic cars and live in luxury apartments.

The Ogun State police command, while parading the suspects, blamed the incident on bad parenting and other societal motivators including religious bodies and Nollywood movies. Command spokesman Abimbola Oyeyemi stated inter alia: “This is a result of bad parenting. It is a result of complete failure of parental responsibility because if this thing had not been encouraged by the parents, I do not believe that any properly brought-up child would want to embark on this type of criminality. I also want to advise that the generality of people have a lot of work to do… Religious bodies should stop preaching only prosperity, you should be preaching morality more than the way you preach prosperity. Nollywood actors and the movie censors board have a lot to do to regulate the type of films they produce because some of them (ritual suspects) learn it from movies.”

The horror in Ogun State illustrated the effect of the culture of quick riches that contemporary society glorifies, and which encourages desperation among misguided youths to get money by hook or crook. It is this same culture that fuels the propensity towards cyber criminality combined with ritualism (‘Yahoo plus’) among youths, which is swamping the present generation and making society very unsafe. This propensity was revealed to have infested shocking age brackets when, about the same time the teen ritualists in Abeokuta were being paraded last week, a video clip surfaced online showing three mid-teen boys seeking where to learn how to scam people (i.e. ‘Yahoo’). The boys, who said they were aged 14 and 15 years respectively, appeared stranded and were believed to have randomly knocked on a man’s gate in an Edo State community. In the two-minute clip, they each had a bag believed to contain all of their personal stuff, and when interrogated by a man whose voice could be heard but face not shown as to where they were headed, they said they wanted to “come hustle.” Pressed on what kind of hustle, they replied: “Yahoo hustle.” Apparently shocked by their response, the interrogator probed whether they really wanted to learn internet fraud, and they answered determinedly in the affirmative, though with the caveat: “not Yahoo plus.” The teenage boys said they took to the streets in search of where to stay and learn cybercrime, having been thrown out of where they previously harboured. Asked about their parents, the boys said they were based in Delta State but were aware they (the boys) were in Edo State.

“It can’t be for unemployment that 14-year-olds to 17-year-olds who should be under their parents’ care go into cyber fraud and money ritual.”

Foregoing examples reinforced a trend that emerged in modern history whereby youth involvement in cyber fraud (‘Yahoo’) and cyber criminality combined with money ritual entailing human sacrifice (‘Yahoo plus’) has become a grossly hazardous social menace. Recent months witnessed several instances of the trend. During the last Yuletide, a youth who just returned from Ghana was reported to have killed his girlfriend named Elohor Oniorosa for ritual purposes. Accounts said the suspect took the victim on a date, only for the young girl to be found dead shortly after with her throat slit and the boyfriend on the run. About the same time, a 300-Level student of the University of Jos (UNIJOS) was found dead in a hotel room with her body mutilated and some parts missing. Jennifer Anthony was reportedly lured to the hotel by her 20-year-old boyfriend, Moses Okoh, who drugged and killed her, then proceeded to pluck off her eyes and other body organs before running off.  Also recently, 32-year-old Afeez Olalere who was arrested by Lagos State Police Command operatives recounted how his mother abetted him to kill his younger brother for money ritual. He alleged that the mother took him to a herbalist who told him he needed to sacrifice one life that must be of his sibling if he wanted to be successful in the ‘Yahoo’ trade. Olalere added that the mother further collaborated with him to kill his younger brother for the prescribed ritual, and it was as they were about to dump the victim’s body that they were apprehended. Not that this trend is a new phenomenon. In 2018, there was public outrage over the gruesome way a student of Delta State University, Abraka, Elozino Ogege, was murdered by ritualists who reportedly harvested her body parts while she was yet breathing.

Some people have argued that the current economic situation and high rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria largely account for the rise of youth ritualists and cyber fraudsters. But that argument does not hold up when you consider the age of many suspects. It can’t be for unemployment, for instance, that 14-year-olds to 17-year-olds who should be under their parents’ care go into cyber fraud and money ritual. Peer pressure and contemporary morality that glorifies wealth as the major means to societal acceptance, maybe. But the effect of even those can’t be divorced from the parenting factor: that is, either negligence of parental responsibility or direct inducement of the youth to participate. Some parents have been reported to kit their children with laptops just so they could go into the ‘Yahoo’ trade, while there are others who reportedly encouraged their children not hitting the big time with straight ‘Yahoo’ to seek further means of making it (‘Yahoo plus’). Others encourage their daughters to date Yahoo boys for pecuniary benefits they expect to rub off on they themselves.

Meanwhile, some suspects of the crimes are so young they can’t even be held to full retribution under the law. And this is why parental liability should be factored into some cases, with parents of minors held liable to the extent of their negligence or inducement of some crimes. Last December in the United States, the parents of a 15-year-old accused of killing four students at a high school in southeast Michigan were charged with involuntary manslaughter – the first time parents of an accused mass shooter were being held criminally liable in the U.S. That is one way to go in our country with underage suspects of vicious crimes.