In recent times, killing for rituals is on the rise in the Nigerian society and this has created concern among the people both within and outside the corridors of power. Indeed, worried about the rising trend of ritual killings in the country, the House of Representatives, few days back, asked the government to declare a national emergency on ritual killings. OLUWATOYIN MALIK, YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE, BOLA BADMUS and JUSTICE NWAFOR, in this report, explore the many cases of ritual killings as well as examine sociological causes, role of parenting, moral decadence and societal influence among other issues.
Ritual killing in the quest for wealth did not just start, but an increase in the trend has been so alarming that it has turned so bizarre and frightening and has made it difficult to trust close friends or relations.
Desperate for money, the ritual killers, most of them youths, go to any length to achieve their aim and their targets don’t exclude parents and siblings, friends and acquaintances most of the time, without any thought for the life of their victims, just to satisfy selfish desires.
Ironically, the contractors of wealth seekers only get stipends for their dastardly acts. And the negative trend cuts across all the geo-political zones of the nation, though more alarming in some parts.
Most recent in spates of ritual killings is the case of 17-year-old Sofiat Kehinde, who was lured by her boyfriend, Soliu Majekodunmi (18) to his room in Abeokuta and killed by her lover and his friend, Mustakeem Balogun, aged 19, by severing her head from her neck.
Before the killing, Soliu had first had sex with the female teenager, and after the head was cut off, the two friends put it in earthenware and took it to a fireplace to burn, all with the aim of performing rituals to get wealthy.
For 27-year-old bricklayer, Olamide Odulaja, it did not take much thought before he connived with a native doctor, Baoku Ifajuyi (29), to kill a woman, Modupeola Folorunso and her four/year-old son for money-making ritual on February 13, 2021, at Ijebu Igbo, before they were eventually arrested by detectives in Ogun State Police Command.
When interrogated, Odulaja confessed that he and Ifajuyi abducted the victim and her son on February 13, and that he was helped by the native doctor to kill the mother and her son, after which he burnt the woman’s head to prepare charms for him. But all he made from the ritual was N9, 000 given to him by the native doctor before their arrest.
In another case, a 29-year-old native doctor, Ismail Wasiu, decided to choose fresh head of his ex-lover, Mujidat, for money ritual, in order to get hundreds of millions, saying that it would bring more reward than a dry one he had once used for a client. He was joined by an accomplice, Shittu Mutairu, also in his desire to be rich at all costs.
Before calling Mujidat from Lagos State to Saki town in Oyo State, where he was domiciled, Wasiu had used a dry human head to prepare charms for a yahoo boy, according to him, and his client called him to say that the charm was successful.
“When the Yahoo boy came, I was the one who told him he needed a head to do the ritual. I learnt about it in a book of record left by the late Afaa who brought me up. To do the ritual, I got dry head, two hands of iro (an animal), two cobra heads, two heads of olufa (big snake), stool made with iroko tree, schnapps and black soap. I ground everything together, poured the schnapps (a brand of gin) on it, mix it with the black soap, pour it in a white breakable plate with cover and place it in the stool. We place the remaining alcohol beside it.more
“In using it, the yahoo boy would drink from the alcohol before taking the mixture to bathe. He called me that the result of the rituals I did for him was positive, promising to further give me a reward, but I had yet to see him before my arrest, except for the N200,000 he paid me ahead of the job,” he told Nigerian Tribune in an interview.
In Ogun State, a hunter, Oladipupo Lekan, was so desperate for money he acceded to the request of his friend when contracted to get body parts for ritual. Arrested alongside Lekan by detectives in Ogun State Police Command were six others; Sulaimon Aremu, Ifayemi Madru, Shittu Saheed, Sulaimon Samad, Akanji Moruf and Adekunle Tajudeen after the murder of one Sunday Okosun and his dismemberment. Lekan said he got N51, 000 for the job done.
A 50-year-old man, Moruf Ganiyu, who was arrested by operatives attached to Mapo Divisional Police Headquarters in Oyo State Police Command with a human head, said that the body part was severed when a corpse was exhumed from the grave of its owner. He also spoke on how his quest for wealth made him and his suspected accomplice, Abideen Raheem (42), exhume a buried corpse from a cemetery and severed its head for money ritual purpose.
It is not only in the South-West that ritual killing trends, in November 2021, the Enugu State Police Command arrested a 36-year-old father, Chidi Onyishi, for allegedly being responsible for the disappearance and murder of his seven-year-old son, Chimdalu, for money ritual. He had initially gone to the police to report the son as missing about two weeks before his arrest.
It was during interrogation that he confessed and named his accomplice as 95-year-old blind pastor, Okeke Eneokwor, after which he took the police to a shallow grave where he buried the remains of his son.
But for providence, 13-year-old Endeley Comfort would have been long gone, as three teenagers were arrested by the Bayelsa State Police Command for alleged attempted ritual killing.
According to the command’s Public Relations Officer, Asinim Butswat, the suspects, identified as Emomotimi Magbisa, Perebi Aweke and Eke Prince, all aged 15, reportedly accosted the victim, hypnotised her to follow them to the apartment of Magbisa in Sagbama community, cut her finger and sprinkled the blood on a mirror for ritual purposes.
Ritual killers have made it a trade and established a language decipherable to only their ilk in order to converse in a way that will not reveal what they were up to. Suspects confessed that they use coded language; they refer to human head as ball, the heart as transformer and hands as fans.
Reported cases of ritual killings continue to surge in many parts of the country and law enforcement agencies have arrested many suspects of ritual killings showing gory pictures of human skulls and dismembered bodies.
Also, the Nigerian social media space has become a search engine for missing people. This led to a civil society organisation, Enough is Enough (EiE), creating a website which is used to document cases of missing persons alongside its sociasl media handles. Some of the people declared missing are found, some dead, some alive with body parts missing while many remain missing. Indeed, the Red Cross Society reported that it received 10,480 reports of missing persons in Nigeria in 2017.
It has also been established that there are different forms of rituals and they are all aimed at getting instant wealth.
House of Representatives takes action
Worried about the increasing trend of ritual killing, the House of Representatives has called for a declaration of a national emergency on ritual killings across the country; this is part of resolutions reached by the lawmakers on a motion of urgent public importance entitled ‘Need to Curb the Rising Trend of Ritual Killings in Nigeria.’
The Minority Leader of the House, Mr Toby Okechukwu, moved the motion during Wednesday’s plenary at the lower chamber of the National Assembly in Abuja.
The lawmakers called on the National Orientation Agency (NOA), as well as parents, heads of schools, religious leaders, and the media to undertake a campaign to change the negative narrative bedevilling the society.
They resolved to call on the Executive Director of the National Film and Video Censors Board to rise to the mandate of the agency, as the clearing house for all movies produced in the country.
The lawmakers mandated the House Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics, and Values to report back to the House within four weeks. Similarly, the House Committee on Police Affairs was mandated to report back to the lawmakers within four weeks.
They further asked the Inspector General of Police to take urgent steps to increase surveillance and intelligence gathering, with a view to apprehend and prosecute all perpetrators of ritual killings in Nigeria.
Ritual killings is simple to tackle —Gani Adams
The Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land, Iba Gani Adams, on his part said dealing with the menace of ritual killings that is on the rise in the land is the simplest thing to achieve, adding that the dreaded Badoo cult group, which used to terrorise Ikorodu town and its environs eventually became a thing of the past, due to collaboration between security outfits and the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), which he led.
Iba Adams canvassed that the Amotekun security outfit should be upgraded to carry strong arms and also be allowed to carry out investigations of alleged criminals found at the scene of crimes like the police also do.
He said the Amotekun security can achieve much more if government could allow the outfit these opportunities, lamenting that the South-West Security Stakeholders Group formed by his group had never been given a role by the government despite the letter written to the three Commissioners of Police bordering on the issue of insecurity ravaging the Lagos- Ibadan Expressway, to which he never got a response.
“On how to address the menace of ritual killings, it is the simplest thing to do, Badoo issue was there in the past but not anymore now. And we have other issues that we can point to that we have handled and resolved. And we have the security outfit; the government has not given us a role. We have a structure on ground, the South-West Security Stakeholders, they are in every state. We don’t have anything less than 50,000 or 100,000 members of the group in each of the states in the region, but the South-West governors did not give us a role.
“At least, if they had given us a role, we would have complemented the efforts of some of the security outfits in the region. And the issue of security is very sensitive and you can’t just dabble into the issue of security without the approval of the government. Once we are given the role, we have men on ground to assist the government, to complement efforts of government securities. I think we would do a lot. The government should give room for healthy competition,” he added.
People who engage in using humans for money rituals usually end up tragically – Baale Esu Angbojeniyi
Foremost native doctor, 78-year-old Chief Kayode Idowu Esuleke, Baale Esu Angbojeniyi of Osogbo land, in an interview monitored on Naijaloaded TV, an online platform, argued that money rituals which involve the use of human parts should be avoided completely because the consequences are dire.
According to him, “There are money rituals; there are rituals for riches; there are also rituals for longevity; there are also rituals to guarantee progress and prosperity. There are however various ways in which these rituals are done. Some people are always in a hurry to make it, and at the end of the day, they will face the consequences.
“There is ‘osole’; there is ‘oso gbigbona’ (hot money ritual); there is ‘oso tutu’ (cold money ritual). There is another one called ‘awure itaje’ (prayers for good luck in business). There are different types of ‘awure itaja’. ‘Awure’ can be referred to as prayers for good luck. This has no negative repercussion. The prayers for good luck that a car dealer would do is different from that which is a cloth merchant would do. If anyone tells you that there is money ritual without repercussion, tell the person it is a lie.
“Unfortunately today, some people don’t care to be rich for just three years; that is hot ritual. He won’t enjoy his life in those three years. In Nigeria today, many youths want to own big cars; they want to be as rich as Dangote and Adenuga. They are not bothered about what these people went through.
“In Osogbo here, someone went to a burial ground. I won’t mention the name of the person. As he dug the ground to bring out the corpse, the corpse pulled his hands and he died there. He who seeks evil will see evil. Some people are destined to be rich at the mid-stage of their lives; unfortunately such people would be running around to make it early in life because of other rich people around.
“Some young people came to consult me from a state in Nigeria. One of them said he was ready to use his male organ for money ritual. I asked him if he had any children; he answered in the negative. I asked why he was in a hurry. He said his peers were already rich. I advised him to be patient; he didn’t listen. He went to a fake herbalist. Both the money he was looking for and the little he had, all vanished.
“People who engage in using humans for money rituals usually end up tragically. Their deaths are usually shameful. In the olden days even if people wanted to engage in such acts, they would make sure that the person died naturally; it would not be because they wanted to use the human parts for ritual that they would kill the person. They never killed a person, drained the blood and then take the various parts for money ritual.”
