THE recent self-confessed ritual killing of Sofiat Kehinde, 20, in Ogun State, by four desperate teenagers drives home the need for an urgent response to halt the frightful upsurge in ritual killings. The decapitation of the young lady in the room of her boyfriend in collusion with three other teenagers is dreadful and akin to a scene in a horror movie. Four teenage suspects, Soliu Majekodunmi, 18, Wariz Oladehinde, 18, Abdulgafar Lukman, 19, and Balogun Mustaqeem, 20, were nabbed by a vigilance group after residents suspected something sinister in a building in Abeokuta.It is the height of the deprecation of societal values; hence, all hands must be on deck immediately to restore moral sanity and pristine mores in the society. Swift punishment is essential.

These horror killings are gaining ground. Alarmed, the House of Representatives has moved a motion asking the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to declare a national ‘state of emergency’ on ritual killings. Indeed, theAbeokuta incident went viral and provoked soul-searching in the society. That anger is not enough if no holistic action is undertaken.

The head of the vigilance group that nabbed the quartet, Segun Adewusi, said a distress call was received from some residents who heard the harrowing noise of Kehinde as she struggled with her murderers in a dingy room around 11pm on January 29, 2022.“We forced him to open the door to his room and as he opened the door, we saw that they had put the slain girl’s remains in a sack and tied it. We asked him to untie it and when he (Mustaqeem) untied the sack, we saw that there was no head on the body. They had burnt the head almost half done,” he recounted. The suspects, now in police custody, later confessed to killing the young lady for money ritual purposes. This is frightening.

Unfortunately, Kehinde’s butchering is only one out of many. The lives of hundreds of other Nigerians have been callously cut short by desperate, vicious, wealth-seeking, and diabolical youths. These youths often double as Internet fraudsters in the warped belief that money ritual guarantees a shortcut to prosperity without hard work.

The spike in such horrendous crime among young Nigerians is despicable. Last January, multiple cases of money ritual-related killings and kidnappings were recorded across the country. On New Year’s Day, the corpse of a missing 300-level undergraduate of the University of Jos, Jennifer Anthony, was found mutilated at a hotel.Some of her body parts, including her eyes, were missing. The alleged ritual killer, Moses Oko, 20, who was nabbed a few days later in Makurdi, Benue State, turned out to be her boyfriend.

Four days on, three teenage suspects –Emomotimi, Perebi and Eke, all 15 years-old–were apprehended for alleged attempted ritual killing in Bayelsa. Also in January, a suspected ritual killer, identified only as Kolawole, was apprehended with a human hand and heart he had harvested from a grave at a cemetery in Ikorodu, Lagos.

The total breakdown of moral values and parental collusion came to the fore on January 11 when a mother and her son were arrested in Ikorodu, Lagos State, for allegedly killing the younger sibling for money ritual. The son, Afeez Olalere, reportedly told the police that his mother encouraged him to commit the heinous crime. Like Olalere, Adeeko Owolabi, 23, confessed to have murdered his girlfriend, Favour Daley-Oladele, in December 2019, and used her body parts to prepare a ritual meal for himself and his mother.

On Christmas Eve in 2021, a suspected internet fraudster identified simply as Osas, allegedly killed his girlfriend, Elohor Oniorosa, in Edo State. It was traced to ritual killing. In November 2021, suspected ritual killers slaughtered an 11-year-old almajiri in Bauchi by smashing his skull and removing his brain.

In September, the body of a yet-to-be-identified female teenager was found dismembered in Delta State, in a case of suspected money ritual. In June, one Akin and his friend, Kabiru Oyeduntan, confessed to have murdered a lady, Toyin Adewale, for ritual purposes in Osun. In the same month, Abdul Alhassan, 19, and four other suspected kidnappers reportedly supplying ritual killers with human parts were arrested in Abuja. In April, a teenage robbery and murder suspect, Mighty Omini, connived with others in the rape and murder of one Doris in her home in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.

Earlier in January 2021, Musa Hamza, 22, was arrested in Bauchi for allegedly beheading a teenager and dismembering and hurriedly burying the body parts in a shallow grave, again reportedly for rituals.

The geographic distribution of the crime shows that it occurs across the length and breadth of Nigeria, hence, the need for prompt, decisive action by the federal and all the 36 state governments to halt the epidemic.There must be swift, resolute response from law enforcement agencies to devise countermeasures.

The Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, must rise to the challenge and ensure the quick creation and equipping of a special task force on ritual killings, just like those on armed robbery, and kidnapping. The special task force should be replicated at all the 36 state police commands and the Federal Capital Territory. They should not hesitate to crush the dens of herbalists and spiritualists linked with arrested ritual killers. They should use digital tools and clamp down on complicit social media spiritualists advertising their trade online.

It is a local crime. Local government chairmen should wake up from their prolonged slumber. States and LGs should ensure that traditional medicine practitioners are brought under strict regulation. State governments must come up with laws and severe punishment for ritual killers and their herbalists and spiritualists.

The active role of the vigilance group in the arrest of the four alleged teenage killers of Kehinde restates the urgent need for state and community policing, and effective neighbourhood watches. States and LGs should invest more in policing their localities to curb crime.

Traditional institutions, religious bodies, community leaders, civil society organisations, influencers, parents, and the society at large should collaborate to restore the loss of moral values in young ones. Faith-based civil society organisations should drive conscious efforts to rediscover our humanity, entrench the values of dignity, hard work, patience, and perseverance, placing less emphasis on materialism. Nollywood movies glorifying ritual wealth should be discouraged.

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