WAKE UP: The rising spate of ritual killings in Nigeria and search for South of our growing up days

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

“Why the history? It is to show how I have since moved on and why it has become impossible for me to see only the farm of my father within the arable land that not only my father but also fathers of others are established. Through this traveling experience, it even became easier for me to see that other fathers’ farms are far more beautiful and bigger than that of my father.  This must be well understood to people of knowledge and wisdom. And if so, we should tarry a while to ponder and see why people should stop feeding their children with information that makes them hate others in the same country where all peoples across tribes and religions should come together with love and tranquility for peace, security, development and general good of all.”

Long before now, we grew up with the impression that repository of knowledge in Nigeria is the South, especially South West part of the country.  Then we began to hear which part produced the first lawyer, the first in any engineering discipline, the first Nigerian nurse, the first Nigerian medical doctor and even the first Nigerian professor. To be talking primitively is to say the first Nigerian to memorise the Qur’an wholly in his heard and the first Nigerian to produce books of science in Arabic.  But we are told the first Nigerian to translate the Bible to Yoruba Language, which is also in the South.  I was even reading a brochure, which gave the first man to fly an aircraft in Africa, not only to be from the South West but also from the same Local Government with me.  I come from Isolo town in Akure Local Government Area of Ondo State in the South West of Nigeria.

We were not just told that. The brag also continued that the Northern part was of a people, who knew no more than growing tomatoes and rearing of cows. Alas! And I thank God for guiding me to a profession that enables me to travel beyond my own place of birth or region to other regions where I now know that even in the North, when the royalty of England came visiting in 1300s, he met the emirate (now sultanate) of Sokoto already exposed to education beyond the imagination of Europe and from what I and many of the South West leaders have seen in the History Bureau in Sokoto, we knew that century before Aba, in South East began to discover themselves for technology, there was technology advancement and industrial development in Northern Nigeria. These are verifiable.

Because I travel around, my eyes open to a lot of these realities in other regions: Northern Nigeria and Eastern Nigeria. In the North, not only that I have been to the North West, I have been admitted into the zone as “Son of the Soil”. That is Sokoto. I do not need to give detail because the detail gives itself. Then I am in Kebbi, Kaduna, Kano and Zamfara with my newspaper having a State Correspondent in Ibrahim Kanoma, who is doing well for Nigeria through our media organization. May Allah ease and improve our affairs so the working relationship will bloom. Why I cannot deny being in Jigawa is because the President of my newspaper’s Advisory Board, AIG Mu’azu Idris Hadeija (Rtd), is from there. So, Jigawa is still within my reach. I have been to the North Central, which was my first place ever to visit in the North and Sheikh Ahmed Lemu became my father with whom I dined, drove and in his main home, the Aisha Lemu building within the IET centre on Ilmu Avenue, Minna, Niger State, I slept for as long I would be in town. Same thing I am in Nasarawa State with me not only sleeping in town but in the very royal palace of the Emir of Keffi, Dr. Umar Chindo. Also in the North Central I am in the Plateau with good stay in Jos. To say I am also in Abuja, the capital of the nation we all own together will be an understatement. All efforts for me to have a ground in North East has not worked out with the Shehu of Borno’s nod still hanging. With AIG Mohammed Mustapha (Rtd) on my newspaper’s Advisory Board, however, I cannot be right to say I am not in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.

Then in my own South, my closeness to states and people cut across the entire geopolitical zone of South West: Ogun not just as media and publicity consultant but son to Prince Bola Ajibola (SAN), the Retired Justice of the World Court. The late Oba Olusanya Adegboyega Dosunmu, Amororo II, the Olowu of Owu Egba, who just passed on in Abeokuta treated me same way. I was, no doubt, a son to Senator Rasheed Ladoja and I called Senator Ishaq Abiola Ajimobi Uncle. Both Ladoja and Ajimobi are former governors of Oyo State. May Allah forgive, keep Ajimobi safe and repose his soul in Al-Jannah Firdaos. The Alaafin treats me like son. In Ekiti, I am son mainly to the Attah of Aiyede Kingdom to whom I am also Media and Publicity Consultant. I can go on then to the Igbo’s South East geopolitical zone. Igweeeeee! I will continue to love the Uthoko Na Eze Achalla, Igwe (Dr.) Ezeoba Alex Nwokedi, OON, even in death.  That is where I am an Igbo son of Anambra State. Let me not mention Delta and Edo states in the South South.

Why the history? It is to show how I have since moved on and why it has become impossible for me to see only the farm of my father within the arable land that not only my father but also fathers of others are established. Through this traveling experience, it even became easier for me to see that other fathers’ farms are far more beautiful and bigger than that of my father.  This must be well understood to people of knowledge and wisdom. And if so, we should tarry a while to ponder and see why people should stop feeding their children with information that makes them hate others in the same country where all peoples across tribes and religions should come together with love and tranquility for peace, security, development and general good of all.

My worry, however, is in the fact that this same Southern part – that used to boast of being the best in everything and even, especially South West, which considered itself to be the only region that had education in those days – is fast turning to a part under control of hoodlums and nonentities.  The worry grows higher when many of us still pretend not to know that this is a keg-of-gun-power we actually sit on and which can now explode more catastrophically in matter of time.  We only saw a tip of an iceberg in the #EndSARS protest. What happened that time would never happen in the North, region of a people we used to call illiterate.

Today the North is fast transforming right in our own eyes and we are still living with the impression that they are know-nothing people. It is alright. Apart from being transformed, the North has the best administrative system where leadership is respected from the village to the district, to the emirate and then the state, the regional level and the nation. This being the reason it is easy to control situation in the North even when the global nature terrorism crisis, partly contributed to by some local politicians, hits the region. The South’s claims may be in the past, the North has world class scientists and technology experts today and more are still coming up.

#EndSARS would never happen in the North like it happened in the South! How do you  destroy your own home when you know you have no other home to come back to rest your head?  But, alas! youths of the most educated part in the country did exactly that until President from a tribe and religion they used that protest to disparage, when they should be addressing serious issues of police brutality against humanity, became the one that helped them even against the evils they did to themselves. Many of the newly commissioned BRT stations they destroyed have not been fixed till today, same thing with over 400 BRT buses with aircondition they set on fire.

That is Lagos. What about over 37 security officers and personnel they killed and set on fire?  Also, what about the innocent ordinary civillians they attacked, maimed, women they raped, looted and burnt alive? Surely they cannot successfully bring them back to life. It did not happen in the North. Up till today, whereas hoodlums have taken over every nook and cranny of our region in the South West controlling the market and transportation economy and rendering our security architecture almost ineffective, we still live in self denial that the South West is the most peaceful part of Nigeria and look towards the North for a mock over insecurity because of Boko Haram and bandit terrorism, which, by the grace of God, they are now getting over.

What happens, if at the end of the whole scenario the North becomes the Makkah and South becomes like Darfur? God forbid that any part of Nigeria will remain in the jaws of insecurity after this time, when it should have passed away. When we should face our individual challenges and then call on the Federal Government where it becomes practicably difficult to tackle, we and our media cover up our own evils that we do to ourselves and are busy screaming over challenges of the North and, more sadly, even say they caused it for themselves. It has got to stop.

In Nigeria, most wicked acts that are perpetrated against humanity, we have found out, are by fellow humans.  The ordinary man should be his brother’s keeper.  Rather, he not only becomes evil doer against the same brother, he makes his life miserable and sometimes you have situation where people go to jump into the Lagoon as a result of unexplainable frustration that comes from this.  Unfortunately, some claim it is because “Buhari has made things difficult for Nigerians” reason people would want to commit suicide. The question those same people should ask themselves is, are people resident and working in Lagos State the only people we can call Nigerians? What about people living in Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara (despite the transitory banditry), Borno, Kebbi, etc? They are all also Nigerians.

Why is it that during the time of Boko Haram in the North East and even now with the banditry in the North West, Southerners, who live in those Northern communities, refuse to vacate to say they are relocating to the South?  Because any Southerner living in the North would tell you, “You in the South are the ones that know where you see the news you are reading and carrying around about the North. We are good here.”  Why is it only in the South, especially South West and particularly Lagos, that life is so hard that people would want to commit suicide? These questions should be thrown to people by themselves. I have been telling my fellow South West people to look inward for solution to their problems against hurling blames on the Hausa-Fulani because those other tribes are not the ones in control of their states and local governments.

For instance, those who say there is hardship in Lagos, the questions are: “In your transport sector, are Hausa-Fulani the ones in control who are increasing transport fares every day bothering not whether your earning has remained static since five years therefore making your salary or wages inadequate to take home? Are Hausa-Fulani the ones in charge of  your market, who will increase prices of items indiscriminately?” In fact, the ones that that still make life easy in Lagos are the Hausa-Fulani in the market because they will never join market associations who force people to make life difficult and will neither increase prices indiscriminately nor reduce measurements like we the South West people of Lagos like in other parts do to ourselves. Then where is the blame of the North in our affairs? Are Northerners the KAI or the Task Force that we cry about? The truth is simply that, when we are unjust to others, God will never be allow us to see justice unless we change for good.

Anyway, the other problem stems from the standpoint of the fact that in a society where people do not want to hear others talking about God although they want to ascribe all the good things of the world that happen in their lives to one ‘scholar’ but get angry when they say it is God, what such society have is situation where people live the life of crisis and frustration. This is complex, though, but God has made it easy in the Qur’an wherein he says that “the Holy Book will benefit none other than people of wisdom”.  If not, they will say, “since they tell us that everything is God, let us stay in our homes and food will come without we going out”.  If this is your understanding of why you should ascribe all happenings of the world to God and Him alone, then you will be long in the hardship to which you plunge yourselves. God save our souls!

It is not to say that I am saint but the truth remains that God wants you to strive and, then, after your strives, recoil to him in prayers for success.  He will happily bless your efforts and then make you succeed because you have ascribed the supremacy and strong force behind success to no one other than him. This is how human beings, creatures of God, must relate with their Lord without whom they could never have come to existence. God, however, does not say he has created man as a perfect being, reason he makes seeking for forgiveness all the times, especially after worship, a significant part of duties of a believer. Let us not deceive ourselves, to believe that there is money in ritualism is to send oneself to hell right on earth and here care should be taken about how we restore our society back to the near pristine enclave that we used to have. It can be better again.

In making it better again, moving forward, we should first and foremost get it right to know that where the content that is broadcast in video, television or radio to households in the society is detailed ritual killing, sexual misbehaviour and urge to display wickedness and be heartless towards fellow citizens, what you have cannot be farfetched.  The reason you can have a boy of 19, partnering with three other friends of between 17 and 20, cut off the head of his girlfriend of equally age of 19 saying, “We needed only the head to make money”. Please a child of 19, what does he want to do with money if he becomes so rich at that age? DSP Abimbola Oyeyemi has my thumb up for saying things in this direction. He advised that filmmakers should mute or jump details when they get to point of ritual killing and how they do it until they begin to show the repercussion to take the minds of people, completely, away from coming near. When you say “but we also show that the end result of ritual killing or criminality is regret”, what about  the technical know-how that you have provided? There are some viewers, who are only interested in the means but would never care about the end. Yet, no ritual expert or harbalist has ever featured on the Forbes rich list.

Saddening to know that these boys, the four of them and the girl, were students of one Alfa, who was supposed to teach them Arabic and Qur’an knowledge in their Abeokuta community (Ile Kewu), the question is, what is the content of knowledge this Alfa was impacting on these children? Is it truly Arabic or Qur’anic knowledge that he was teaching them or knowledge of how to make juju (charms) just in way that it becomes hard to separate what they are taught from occultism? What is the role of parents here? How many parents make research about who the Alfa to teach their children Arabic and Qur’anic knowledge in an informer sector is?  If those boys did not see their Alfa burning human parts at that same spot where they burnt the head of the girl, would they have had the knowledge of same?

Also the gruesome murder, reported on May 11, 2021 of Iniobong Umoren, is another sad example of what the South has become.  Iniobong was a young woman in her early 20s, who lived in Uyo the Akwa Ibom State capital. She shared, on Twitter, her need for a job, and one Twitter user named  Uduak Akpan asked her for a private chat concerning her application. According to police reports, Mr. Akpan asked Ms. Umoren to meet her at a particular location in Uyo. When the unsuspecting lady got there, the sinister man raped, killed and buried her in a shallow grave. Unfortunately for the serial rapist and murderer, the lady gave her friend the phone number of the person, who invited her for an interview. This number led to the apprehension of the culprit after the lady was declared missing for days. There were reports that Ms. Umoren’s gruesome murder was not just a case of rape and murder but that it also involved ritual killing. Mr. Akpan’s entire family is said to be involved in the barbaric business of ritual killings.

What is the role of government? Why is government leaving the religion sector only to itself and allowing some so called clerics misbehave with people’s lives the way we see them do in the society today?  We saw – during the Coronavirus lockdown when certain bishop, who should find out how to better the lots of his Church members, locked down at home and in hunger and if he could help, he should, but prayed for them if he had no power to help – how he sent SMS codes round and even published same to say that members who were locked down and could not come to Church should pay their tithes through the SMS codes into his Church bank account. This same bishop had threatened the hell of government just because of Law of CAMA and had ceaselessly incited the Nigerians against the government and against themselves.  Should government continue to look at the religious sector and allow so called clerics mess up the country the way they are doing, hiding under religion?  That is where Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai will continue to have my prayers. He told people who were causing religious crisis in Southern Kaduna to stop because, he said, “You cannot hide under religion and cause problem for my people. I will deal with you.” Today, there is relative peace in Kaduna, indisputably.

This, however, should be handled by Federal Government because some state governments, do I say state governors, are not better than helping the course of satan the way they behave.  If not, why should governors, who know precisely that the idol worshippers are the ones influencing these Alfas and pastors to perpetrate ritual killings in the society and they still go ahead to resuscitate their occultic practices under the guise of Isese (traditionalism)? It is only at the Federal level that commonsense can be made to prevail on this and government people, be they Muslims nor Christians, will be sensible enough to recruit sound Islamic and Christian and scholars and jurists, who will handle the regulation of the two religions (Islam and Christianity).  I am not an advocate of traditional religion because there is nothing like traditional religion but Satanism.

The only religion that is traditional in the world is that one that teaches about Godliness and that is what Islam and Christianity do.  There is another – Judaism which is not practiced in Nigeria but in the Jewish communities of the West and Middle-East. If politicians in authorities here want to show that they truly love their people, they should take care of their people’s religions for them and whoever wants to go the way of Satanism should be made to know he is on his own because it is only in the so called traditionalism (Satanism) that they have reference for blood – human parts – and other evil things as means of attaining wealth and power in life. None of those religions with evidence of link with and traces to Godliness has such reference. If any Christian cleric is found to have buried a whole of pregnant woman under the pulpit in his Church, because the religion the pastor claims he belongs to is known, we can say, “No, he is on his own because there is nowhere in Christ’s teachings that preaches or encourages use of human blood for prosperity.” The same thing if the evil one is a Muslim cleric. No one has justification in the Bible or Qur’an for ritual killing.

*WAKE UP is opinion article column of Alhaji Bashir Adefaka, Lagos-based Journalist, publisher and media and publicity consultant. Reach him via thedefenderngr@gmail.com or 08163323906 (text only).