Charlatanism, pulpit scams and ritual murders

They get younger these days, don’t they, our army of ritual murderers? And we have a lot of them. Killers. Potential killers. They are all out there, waiting for the charlatan who would tell them that if they bring certain human body parts, they would slay, slash, and chop, even if it were their parents, […]

They get younger these days, don’t they, our army of ritual murderers? And we have a lot of them. Killers. Potential killers. They are all out there, waiting for the charlatan who would tell them that if they bring certain human body parts, they would slay, slash, and chop, even if it were their parents, just to be rich quickly. In their wake, they are leaving a trail of lifeless victims with missing body parts, and families scarred and traumatised for life.

In Lokoja this September, Damilola Oloyowa was a 19-year-old girl dreaming of graduating from university someday. She was already in her first year when she met one Jeremiah Paul, who lured her, drugged her, and strangled her before mutilating her corpse. He sent some of her body parts to a Babalawo in Ibadan, who allegedly used them to make a soap that would make Jeremiah rich. The logic is perplexing, of course, but Jeremiah and his accomplices believed it enough to act.

All the suspects arrested in this case were in their late teens or early twenties. But Jeremiah, in particular, was so desperate for wealth that he had already contacted Damilola’s family to demand a ransom and used part of the N400,000 he received to buy phones and food.

How about the necrophile Ifeanyi Njoku, who murdered his live-in girlfriend, Precious Okeke, 24, whom he had lured from her village to come stay with him in Lagos? For six days in April 2022, he sexually violated her corpse until the stench compelled the neighbours to call the police to investigate what was happening. Ifeanyi was upset, you see, because his nosy neighbours had interfered with his plans to get rich quickly. His Babalawo had instructed him to complete seven days of necrophilia with the corpse. He was arrested one day shy of the completion of that vile act.

• World University Ranking: Only one Nigerian institution makes top 1,000 list
• FG finalises executive order on zero VAT for pharmaceutical manufacturers

There is the case of Damien Collins, a Port Harcourt-based skit maker on Facebook, who at 24 decided he didn’t want to put in the work and make money like other skit makers are doing. Collins, who was in his final year in the university, did not want to wait, graduate, and work his way to wealth. So he took the shortcut. This included murdering his 20-year-old girlfriend, Otuene Justina, whose three-day-old corpse was discovered in the suspect’s apartment, sans some body parts. She was a 300-level student doing her industrial training at the time of the murder.

This is obviously not a new problem. We grew up hearing stories of ritual killings for wealth. We grew up with warnings not to stray too far, not to pick up banknotes on the ground, not to follow strangers so our little corpses are not discovered in a ditch with parts missing. A gruesome fear to instill in children, but one that has unfortunately become necessary. This subject is not even new in this column, as my July 14, 2022 piece addressed it. Has anything changed since? Not really. Apart from the perpetrators seemingly getting younger and more desperate, I guess.

What makes this barbarism possible? What convinces people to believe in it? Well, there are several factors. There has to be some kind of social conditioning. The stories we have heard about money rituals have affected us in different ways. Some have adopted a skeptical mindset and viewed it as a scam. Others have believed in the efficacy of these rituals and consequently developed a perpetrator mindset. People like Jeremiah Paul, for instance, believed in it so much that when he chanced upon a charlatan on Facebook advertising those services, he reached out to the man over WhatsApp, went for a consultation, and received instructions on what human parts to produce for the ritual.

What is the root of this social conditioning then? I don’t think this is something that can be attributed to one thing, but rather to a convergence of thinking and ideologies. Yet at the centre of this convergence is avarice. The greed to exploit people for wealth. It is this greed that drives charlatans, be they traditional diviners, pastors, alfas, or bokayes, to sell dreams and promises to people. They offer to make one rich for a token. Somehow, their clientele doesn’t seem to question the reason why these men are themselves poor, banking on the handouts of their customers and the chicken offerings to add to their stew pots.

In principle, it is the same gimmick that is at play in the ubiquitous prosperity preaching that we have today, where clerics demand money from their congregants in a divine money-doubling scheme. Such places of worship have become places where people no longer go to learn about God but to be sold illusions of wealth and worldliness. To buy into illusions of wealth and prosperity.

Often, critics have vilified Nollywood for glamorising money rituals. While that may have some elements of truth, to a large extent, these criticisms have often ignored the fact that most Nollywood movies use this as teachable experiences, where the perpetrators never get away with the crimes, often ending, according to the tropes, raving mad or vanquished by powerful spiritual forces for good. Nollywood did not create these tropes out of a vacuum but drew them from practices in society. This culture has, for centuries and decades, been infused with this charlatanism that has today become institutionalised through houses of worship. Not only that, a culture of lack of accountability has festered, where unexplained wealth, through the looting of public funds or fraud, has become glamorized. Criminals like Hushpuppi were applauded and praised, and looting public officials are worshipped.

Unless we make these crimes unattractive and create a situation where consequences for such crimes are made obvious and clear to dissuade other would-be criminals, we will continue to experience these things.

Unless Nigerians are better educated—not just on studying to pass exams, but on clear and rational thinking, and on civic rights and practices—then we will continue to see more and more young people willing to hack at innocent others for a get-rich-quick ritual. Perhaps if the Nigerian state stops treating this issue as circumstantial occurrences and institutes a deliberate programme or action to address it, two years from now, I may have to write another column about this. Please don’t make me do that. This is traumatic enough. For the victims and their loved ones, one cannot even begin to comprehend the trauma they are burdened with. Let’s be deliberate about ending this national pandemic.