If there’s anything, today, in the country that we’re all found culpable, it’s our silence, neutrality and defense. Silence in the face of abnormalities, neutrality in the way of criminalities, and defense at the expense of immoralities and injustice. There’s no gainsaying that we’re all victims of this vicious circle. That’s the society we have built, and the generations we have produced and brought up.
That this generation is attracted to many luxuries of life is to state the obvious. But three things appease them at best and make them advertently lost on morals and societal ideal at the worst: free money, sex and social vibes. These are the generations you could have expected to be scientifically literate and financially outsmart. You expect them to have moved past the fallacy of superstitions and suppositions embedded in African traditional practices, but again, they pitifully lurk in the horrible past of their ancestral beliefs on ancient money ritual myths.
Barely about a couple of weeks now there have been a series of alleged killings for rituals. From the news of about four under-20 boys caught with the head of Sofiat Okoewo, to a couple arrested with human parts in Ogun. Before now there’s a 20-year-old man, Moses Oko, arrested by the police for allegedly killing his girlfriend, a University of Jos’ 300-level student, Jennifer Anthony, for ritual purposes whose body was found at a hotel with her eyes gouged out and some other body parts missing. Similarly, a 300 Level undergraduate of Delta State University, Abraka, Elozino Ogege was gruesomely murdered by a gang of four Yahoo boys. But unlike Jennifer Anthony, who was reportedly drugged before her vital organs were removed, Ogege’s murder was horrifying and vicious. The assailants allegedly took the young lady to a bush where they plucked out her eyes while she was still alive and screaming.
In a complex society like ours, one can’t but expect a divide on moral opinions. It’s worrisome that some people would go the way both social and mainstream media to blame the victims and ask questions on what had led to their travails. That’s one class where a section of the country who are hell-bent to defend the sanctity of money-making rituals as the playouts of the horrible situation of the country’s economy and insecurities belongs, while those who refer to the young generation as lazy Nigerian youths hold the ground that there could be no justification whatsoever for sacrificing other people’s lives and hope and future on a fruitless and unscientifically proven basis.
While the narrative of ‘money ritual’ is sourced in ‘African traditional practices’ and thus revealed how modernity has led lazy and desperately greedy youths whom we referred to as the lazy Nigerian youths into the outdated practice, it’s important that we extensively inquire into the ingenuity of money rituals and a very vital question be asked on whether the processes of money ritual, if passed out, in the real sense, is a means of wealth creation? But, sadly, there’s no evidence on who to point at as a model for this degeneration, not even the richest person on earth. And again, it all bounces on mere fallacy and unestablished narratives which have made our girlfriends, mothers, fathers, friends and many unfortunate others to their early graves.
Sadly, the country is yet to take from the perilous Pharaoh or its leaders are too jaded to bear the wisdom of Solomon and topple these anomalies before it’s too late. Are there no family values and good parenting anymore? Where is the supposedly religious enterprise that lines up our streets with mega churches and mosques? Where are their moral teachings, moral rebirth and our role models in cassocks? On the part of the government, where is the National Orientation Agency (NOA)? What of the National Agency for Ethics and Value Compliance (NEVACO)? At the crossroad, will Nigeria have a safe cross?