EXPLAINER: How Ritual Killings Gyrate Nigeria’s Tertiary Institutions
This article was first published with our inaugural March-June Edition in 2022. We're republishing it because of its relevance to the current trend in Nigeria and the need for a drastic change.
Nigeria is on the verge of losing its sanity hook, line and sinker to the guerillas it is breeding. Ignoble erosion is already wiping out the norms and if care is not taken, insanity will completely take over, soon. And when this is done then, it will be dawn on the elite, think-tanks, avant-garde, human rights activists, lawmakers, judicial council and executive council how they all have helped this society baptised itself into a schizophrenic hall of lunatics.
“Yahoo Yahoo” and “ritual killings”—both of which have come to end the country once and for all, persist in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions yet very few are paying attention.
A horror report descended to the ears of Nigerians. Probably, the worst of all in 2022. Four self-confessed desperate teenagers in Ogun State, beheaded Sofiat Kehinde, 20, for a money ritual. This has driven home the need for an urgent response to halt the frightful upsurge in ritual killings but our lawmakers are still sleeping, while the Judicial council and Executives still don’t know where to turn.
The decapitation of the young lady in the room of her boyfriend was with the collusion of three other teenagers who have said they learnt about the process through a Facebook user whose job is prescribing the “How to” of rituals for Facebook users. Another face begging for our lawmakers’ attention and most especially, the new minister of Information, Mohammed Idris. We think this should be the time Facebook and other platforms need to be strictly regulated more than before in Nigeria and not banned.
The scene of Sofiat’s decapitation has been described as dreadful and akin to a scene in a horror novel or movie mostly scripted by Author Dean Koontz or West! 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 sanity; hence, all hands must be on deck immediately to restore moral sanity and pristine mores in society. Swift punishment is essential.
Worthy of note, the gratuitous guillotine of Sofiat is not the only gory our society has witnessed over the years in the name of “getting rich fast” and while the impropriety deeds abound, young Nigerians caught in the web still flaunt in the attire of the wrong as if it is a Christly profession. Yet, lawmakers are sleeping.
January 2021, 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.
Bitterly, the utter loss of moral values and parental collusion came to the fore 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.
In the same blood, Adeeko Owolabi, 23, also 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.
As if these wasn’t enough, on the Eve of the 2021 Christmas, 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 having 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.
Also, in October 2021, a student of Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, (Full time) National Diploma One, Omowunmi, was reported dead after spending weeks in the residence of her boyfriend, Adeyemi whom they were both classmates, but not age mates. The cause was allegedly traced to a money ritual.
To count but few, the spike of the money ritual-related cases are overarching and while the arrest ever done by the operatives may not be enough measures to curb the incessant attacks on the morals and values of the Nigerian society; Lawmakers and the Executive Council are essentially needed to swing into action. New laws needed to be established to curb new crimes.
Cyber criminals should not only be arrested but be made to witnessed more horror than an arrest. It will be recalled that ritual killings are graduation to the next level of immorality perpetrated by young Nigerians after cybercrimes have prevalently sabotaged our society and gratuitously portrayed us internationally as criminalised country.
Though operatives of EFCC and the Police have always been arresting cyber criminals, none of the criminals arrested has been dealt with as Ramoni Abass, (Hushpuppi) was with the FBI.
It is emphatically undebatable that this is our reality in Nigeria wearing us out little by little while we, Giant of Africa can’t do a thing to it.
Lawmakers need to pass bills to curb ritual killings, to curb cybercrimes, to curb Facebook and other social media platforms in being avenues for traditionalists who prescribed horror means to “get rich quick”.
These should be the next bills to pass into law, now. We’re sure if there was a way the Federal Government restricted Twitter from functioning in Nigeria, there should be a way to regulate it and all other platforms from allowing some traditionalists to go about their heinous acts and corrupting the social values.
Read Also: Music Producer, Samklef Blames Nollywood Movies For Rise In Ritual Killings
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