THE spate of gruesome murders in the form of attempted money rituals across major cities in Nigeria have caused serious worries for every right thinking citizen. The country is not only plagued by bloodthirsty 'bandits' and terrorists, but also neighbours with secretive ambitions to slaughter their fellow Nigerians to get money through some occultic means.
Soliu Majekodunmi is the 18-year-old who was arrested alongside three of his friends for killing Sofiyah, decapitating her, and burning her head. The teenager has now told us that he learnt this horrific practice for suspected money ritual purposes on Facebook.
It is shocking how much of a grip social media, and the internet, has on the mind of our youth. Apparently, Nigeria has replaced most of its virtues with vices; our society has no positive value system anyone. Many families are raising monsters in a very harsh economic terrain. All these lead to a desperate rush for short-cut approaches to riches without care for neighbours or the environment.
17 years old Soliu went on Facebook to search for "how to make money ritual", in his own words. Even if Facebook produced no result he might have very likely went to Google to search for the same thing.
Why would a young lad go on the internet to search for how to get easy money through diabolical means? The answer is simple: Nigerians have grown so desperate that they are willing to become demons in order to live like angels.
The country is facing an all time high of poverty and some Nigerians have reverted to crime for far too long it has been normalised. By now, our youth believe their political and economic leaders are criminals, so many of them choose to follow the path of crime. Unfortunately, some crimes are more terrible than others; so, we now have to deal with one of the most terrible crimes because we have permitted the so-called 'small crimes' to thrive in our midst.
We complain about how social media is driving young Nigerians to desperation in their search for riches. It is believed by some Nigerians that there won't be as much desperation for riches if immature people are refused access to see opulence and lavish lifestyles on Facebook or Instagram. But this is a myopic perspective or, more precisely, it is a lack of perspective. Opulence does not live on Tik Tok or Instagram, it lives amongst us. Some of our neighbours are stupendously rich that they cannot hide their wealth. We can stop Facebook and Instagram, but this evil will remain so long as young people are born into the criminal realities of our society.
Nollywood is not to blame, neither is Tik Tok. Nigeria must own up to its collective error in the face of this great evil and purge itself of fundamental criminal tendencies. Do not jump the queue, do not take a bribe, do not forgive thieves, do not condone corrupt practices in government, do not let the Dowen saga culprits go unpunished. We must stop celebrating criminals in high places so that our youths will know that it is indeed wrong to ride exotic cars and live in luxury apartments born out of another person's sweat or blood.
