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By Cosmas Omegoh
Here are words of caution for the girl child and adult women out there.
•The late Justina and her boyfriend
The police and other stakeholders want them to tread cautiously by avoiding men pretending as their lovers, and those wooing them on the social media.
Parents too are urged to keep their eyes on their grown up girls, as doing so will spare everyone serious heartache.
According to some stakeholders, evil days are here. Women are becoming increasingly endangered, targeted for ritual killing. Some gullible ones often do not know that they are being hunted as they get lured to be killed by their supposed boyfriends and men wooing them for paid intimacy.
•The late Regha and her boyfriend
Our correspondent learnt that across the country, a growing tribe of ritual murderers, some of them now called Yahoo-Plus are on the prowl. The members are using women’s body parts for money-making rituals. Some of the victims are invited to their death by people they meet via various social media platforms.
According to our correspondent’s investigations, this killing of women is a departure from the reported way of using remote means to do so. Then ritualists, it would be recalled, went about craving for ladies’ pants which they usually took to native doctors to help them prepare money-spinning charms. Thereafter, owners of the underwear might suffer undisclosed ailments and eventually die without anyone knowing exactly what happened to them. But that trend seems to be in the past, and now replaced by brutal butchering of women and girls at every turn.
Not long ago, for instance, a group, Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) reported that “over 150 incidents of ritual-related killings were reported in the Niger Delta between January 2018 and December 2021.”
The body lamented that the “incidents also indicate an upsurge in targeted killings of women and girls for ritual purposes in the region, particularly in Cross River, Delta and Imo states.”
In the recent past, states like Rivers, Edo, Ogun, Ondo, Abuja and others in the Southwest have witnessed reported uptick in ritual killing of women.
In October last year, for instance, the Rivers State Police Command arrested a University of Port Harcourt, 400-level student (names withheld), it identified for allegedly killing his girlfriend, Justina Otuene, and harvesting her organs.
Late last year too, a 19-year-old undergraduate of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Oghenefejiro Regha, was allegedly slaughtered in Benin City, Edo State, by her boyfriend.
A commentator told our correspondent that out of every two incidents of reported ritual killings, there could be 10 of such that had happened without trace.
Now, a recent breakthrough by the Ogun State Police Command buttressed the claim.
The Ogun State police revealed a ring of ritual killers that has allegedly been killing women for money-making over the years without public knowledge.
The syndicates’ ways came to limelight when the Commissioner of Police, Ogun State, Abiodu Mustapha Alamutu, recently paraded them – men who allegedly have been killing women and reaping huge profits from the act.
According to details made available to our correspondent by the Ogun State Police Command’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Omolola Odutola, the gang allegedly killed a woman, Sulaimon Adijat, 35, of Ajegunle road, Atan Ota, Ogun State.
The victim was invited to a date by one Adebayo Olawale Azeez before she met her untimely death.
It was one death too many that revealed a little about the fate of many other women who had died without a trace.
According to Odutola, the Ogun State police boss had to rally a “tactical team, specifically the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Command to unravel the mystery behind her disappearance, and as such, the team embarked on a technical-based investigation, which led to the arrest of the seven suspects who participated actively in the abduction and eventual murder of the missing Sulaimon Adijat.”
She gave the names of the gang members who individually reaped hundreds of thousands of naira for their separate roles in the dastard act.
Odutola said that investigations revealed that the suspects harvested the victim’s head, two breasts, virgina, two wrists and other body parts which they burnt in a local pot till the next day.
According to her, “a search was conducted in the shrine of Abidemi Moses on February 3, 2024, and 10 female handbags, two 25 litres gallons containing human parts, one axe, and two cement sacks containing human bones were recovered from his shrine at Igbo Olomi, Atan Ota.”
She added that “the relative of the deceased later came to the police station and identified one of the 10 bags that were recovered as the hand bag of their daughter, Sulaimon Adijat,” adding “meanwhile, all the arrested suspects confessed to the alleged crime and their individual roles.”
Rights activist reacts
Reacting to the incident, a women’s right activist, Nike Adejumo, described the trend as depressing.
“The fate of women in the hands of ritualists and the so-called Yahoo-Plus boys nowadays is quit pathetic.
“It is unfortunate that women are being targeted and killed so cheap in recent times. The situation is more worrisome when the killers are men and boys pretending to be the women’s lovers and boyfriends. How would an innocent girl have figured out that the young man she is going out with and hoping to marry will be the one to kill her? But that is the sad reality we have right before us these days,” she said.
Sociologist explains trend
A sociologist, Mr Godwin Udenka, noted that the culture of killing women for rituals is a clear symptom of “societal decadence and degeneration.”
He maintained that, that “is an indication that the Nigerian society is tending towards anomie; people are just not thinking about others, but themselves and what they can do to survive.
“That is the way it is. It is a clear indication of erosion of values and degeneration of the entire societal structure and norms.
“The Nigerian society was such that culturally people were not meant to take lives easily just like that.
“But for us to have got to this stage, what it means is that there is an erosion of those values which tended to inhibit certain ills from happening in the past.
“Even faith doctrines that tended to inhibit or make people from being afraid of doing certain things are now gone. They are no longer strong. Those inhibitions are being removed by the subculture of poverty that is being entrenched.
“So, what we are seeing has something to do with the level of poverty, societal degeneration and leadership failure. The last is what is driving the people to this extreme that they must make money to survive.
“Now, the reality is that most people want to make money at all costs. That has become their driving force. So, the societal norms, cultural values and structures are breaking down. What is being entrenched now is materialism.”
Mr Udenka is saddened that killings and harvesting of human parts for money are holding the Nigerian society out as beastly, further regretting that more and more Nigerians are beginning to place greater premium on money rather than on lives.
“If people can ingest cocaine, just to make money knowing that if it bursts, they are dead, they can as well kill to make money.
“So, those societal inhibitions which tended to stop those kinds of behaviours have been eroded already. That’s why we see those kinds of extreme behaviours manifesting,” he said.
Way out of ugly trend
Adejumo wants women and young girls to be acutely aware that these are evil days and must take extreme precaution to ensure their safety.
“Let every woman and girl out there know it now that those pretending to love them might be their nemesis after all.
“To this end, they must be conscious of who they roll with. More importantly, women and girls out there must learn to depend upon themselves rather than the men for their upkeep.
“The so-called hookup girls should take a cue from what is going on right now and have a rethink,” she advised.
She warned parents to return to keep their eyes on their daughters with a view to handing them good upbringing.
On his part, Udenka warned women to slow down the rate of their involvement in social media, warning that not doing so could be potentially dangerous.
“Women need to know that it is not everything about themselves that they should throw into the social media. They shouldn’t live all their lives on the social media. Don’t project everything about yourself there.
“The social media is a potential platform for the women to be lured by criminals. It is also a platform for criminals to say ‘okay, this is a lady I can make money from.’ Therefore, the less quiet women are on the social media the better for them. They should learn to project less of themselves on it.”
He also warned women out there on the streets to exercise caution and be observant.
He said that it was sad for girls to be killed by their boyfriends, ascribing the ugly incident also as a part of the breakdown of societal values.
“Often, they don’t care about where the young man they are going out with is getting the money. The man keeps giving them money they never know how he makes it. And when it is time for him to need human parts, they just become cheaply victims.
“Therefore, women need to caution themselves. They must find out what the young men they are following are doing for a living. Yes, they might have the money, but what exactly do they do? If the women don’t find out and the time comes, they will surely pay a price.”
He maintained that “women must be careful about the company they keep. They must understand that life is not about being like the every other person. Be yourself.
“Part of their challenge is that all the time, they want to be part of what is reigning; they want hair that costs N500,000, they want their boyfriends to buy that for them.”
Contributing, the Public Relations Officer (PRO), Lagos State Police Command, Benjamin Hundeyin, acknowledged that more than ever before, security has become a thing of serious concern.
He told our correspondent that not minding whether one is male or female, the watchword these days should be security.
“Everybody needs to be security conscious these days. Everybody needs to place maximum premium on their security,” he urged.
