BY ROSEMARY NWAEBUNI
“I was around the place when people started shouting from the Origbara axis. When I got there, I saw Daniel with a human head in a bag. I was shocked to later discover it was the head of Emmanuel, his younger brother’’. This was how Mr. Roland Akin- wumi summarised the gruesome murder in Odigbo town, Odigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State, of 17-year-old Emmanuel by his 26-year-old elder brother, Daniel, on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, for ritual purposes.
On January 9, 2025, the Delta State Police Command apprehended a 20-year-old youth identified as Precious, who killed a 10-year-old girl, named Jessica and extracted her blood for ritual purposes. This heinous crime was committed in the Orhoakpo axis of Ethiope East Local Government Area of the State. The victim was said to be the younger sister of the suspect’s girlfriend.
On March 7, 2025, Lawrence Edobor, a 43-year-old fashion designer, was beheaded in Evbuotubu, Benin City, Edo State by a 27-year-old Uwadiae Airebiuwa and his accomplices for money ritual motives. It was reported that the victim was returning home at about 2 a.m. from a wake-keep he attended the revious night, when he was ambushed, killed, and his head severed from his body.
In September 2024, a 16-year-old Azeez Tajudeen, who lives in the Ijanikin area of Lagos State, lured a four-year-old boy, named Ibrahim, to a nearby primary school, stabbed and strangled him to death. According to the suspect’s confession, he removed the victim’s intestines, kidneys, and private organs for a man named Osho, who asked him to get him some human parts and promised to pay him N50,000 for the service.
On February 11, 2025, a 29-year-old Islamic teacher, Abdulraman Bello, gruesomely murdered Yetunde Lawal, a final year student of the Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin, whom he met on Facebook. According to the Kwara State Police Command, the suspect killed Yetunde and dismembered her body for alleged money ritual intentions.
On January 29, 2022, Police in Abeokuta, Ogun State, arrested four youths aged between 18 and 20 years old in connection with the killing of 20-year-old Sofiat Kehinde. The suspects, one of whom used to be romantically involved with Kehinde, had reportedly decapitated her with a machete in his room and proceeded to burn her head, ostensibly to use the ashes and other body parts for money-making rituals. The State Police Command stated that the teenagers were caught and arrested with the severed, half-burnt skull of Sofiat in a mud pot and her remains already packed in a sack, ready to be thrown away. The Police were informed that one of the murderers, named Mustaqeen, who was Sofiat’s ex-lover, had mooted the idea of engaging in ritual killing after he got the information on how to get rich quickly on the internet.
These are just a few of the chronicled incidents of money-related ritual killings involving Nigerian youths. This dangerous, frightening and alarming frenzy cuts across the length and breadth of the country from the west to the north, east and south regions.
Ritual killings, a deviant behaviour previously identified with hardened criminals in society, have now become a pastime crime among the young generation, including secondary school students, who, in the quest for swift wealth acquisition, take to money rituals, having been brainwashed to believe that money rituals involving human sacrifices will make them rich overnight.
Money ritual refers to specific practices or ceremonies that people engage in, often associated with black magic or superstition, to attract wealth, prosperity or financial stability. These rituals or sacrifices vary widely across different cultures and belief systems.
They commonly involve symbolic actions, prayers, affirmations or the use of specific objects and materials believed to attract wealth or financial prosperity.
Money rituals in Nigeria are commonly associated with black magic or superstition, where individuals engage in sacrifices with the belief that it will bring them wealth or financial prosperity. Although beliefs in ritualistic practices for wealth have existed in Nigeria for decades, money rituals involving the use of human blood or body parts to attract wealth and prosperity are a relatively recent phenomenon in Nigeria.
The current upswing in money-related ritual killings involving Nigerian youths can be attributed to several factors, including poverty and economic hardship; unemployment and economic inequality; delinquency, peer pressure and desire to belong; recognition of wealth over and above educational achievements; greed and the mounting desperation for wealth; decline in moral values and poor parenting; involvement in cultism, substance abuse and yahoo-Yahoo; laziness on the part of youths that makes them to opt for the easy way to get rich instead of working hard; belief in spiritual powers, exposure to unwholesome social media sites and non-regulated social media content; depiction of ritual wealth in Nollywood movies and the fantasy it creates; display of ill-gotten wealth by adults in society; weak enforcement of laws on criminality; as well as societal glorification of wealth irrespective of source, which makes some youths to see nothing wrong with their involvement in money rituals.
Among the factors responsible for the increasing involvement of youths in money-making rituals, social media influence appears to be the main culprit.
Purveyors of the efficacy of money rituals, including herbalists, religious clerics and cult priests/priestesses, freely advertise their ritual business on social media platforms without being sanctioned by regulatory authorities. There are several Facebook accounts and WhatsApp groups created by ritualists for seekers of money rituals.
Most of the social media pages advertise their trade with colourful photographs of new naira and foreign currency notes placed in African traditional pots, calabashes, and cowrie-strewn bags. Some show blood splattered on the ground around these items. Some of these ritualists regularly post make-believe videos on their Facebook and WhatsApp statuses featuring clients who claim to have acquired money through their rituals. Many youths hinge their belief in the efficacy of money rituals on these unverified social media testimonies. This has attracted many youths who are in a hurry to be rich without hard work into undertaking desperate measures, including killing close family members and friends.
In all the recorded cases of ritual killings in Nigeria, young women appear to be the most targeted, with reports of their adoptions, murders, and dismemberment of their bodies. There has been a troubling phenomenon involving the systematic killing of young women, especially those aged 17 to 24, by their romantic partners for money-ritual purposes. The reasons young women are more susceptible to money ritualists are varied.
A major reason is their involvement in romantic relationships with devious characters, unbeknownst to them. Indulgence in prostitution by some young women also exposes them to the vagaries of the night, including incidents of ritual killings. This unwholesome behaviour makes them easily amenable to deceitful young men with ritualistic intentions.
The feeling of discontent with their present socio-economic status and the pressure to live a good life combine to make women easy targets for ritualists who promise them the good life they seek. Excessive focus on financial gains equally makes young women more vulnerable to manipulations and the likelihood of going into precarious relationships with wealthy partners without bothering about their source of wealth.
The consequences of youths’ engagement in money rituals are myriad. They include loss of life, public disgrace and shame both to the perpetrator and their families, spiritual emptiness, spiritual and psychological trauma, prosecution, and untold anguish for victims’ families, imprisonment and death of the perpetrators.
The continuous rise in the pursuit of instant wealth, spurred by the belief in the use of human parts for rituals to achieve financial success, especially the increasing involvement of Nigerian youths, has become a matter of profound concern to the government, parents and society at large.
Curbing this hydra-headed monster of money rituals threatening to overwhelm the Nigerian society would require concerted efforts of the government, parents and civil society.
Although the Government has made considerable efforts to deter perpetrators by enacting laws that criminalise ritual killings, including the use of human parts for ritualistic purposes, enforcement of those laws has remained a challenge.
Strict and diligent enforcement of the laws falls below public expectations. Government should therefore ensure that the laws against crimes as heinous as ritual killings not only prescribe severe penalties for offenders but also ensure that the enforcement mechanisms are firmed up both in capacity and funding.
Efforts should also be made to protect victims’ families in the course of trying to get justice. Government should, in addition, carry out advocacy using the instrumentality of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to address the underlying beliefs that fuel such practices. This can be achieved through public awareness campaigns in higher institutions of learning and community engagement.
Parents have very important roles to play in curbing the spate of youth involvement in money rituals, especially considering their traditional role in socialising children. Parental roles can either help or hinder the socialisation process of their youth. Studies have shown that youths raised in dysfunctional families are more prone to engage in vagrant and deviant behaviour such as juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, drinking and criminal indulgence like money rituals.
These days, many parents tend to shy away from using disciplinary measures as a corrective instrument towards remedying children’s bad behaviour in society. As a result, most children grow up to lack positive emotional adjustment, which is the ability to adapt to life changes and manage their emotions effectively. They do not feel remorse whenever they do wrong or transgress the laws of the land.
Some parents engage in cultism and other forms of anti-social behaviour, thereby rubbing it on their children who grow up to believe that it is right to indulge in such practices. It is high time parents sat up and lived up to their responsibilities. They should join the government and other stakeholders to stem this dangerous trend.
Some of the ways to do this are to constantly monitor the activities of their children and wards on the internet; regularly admonish their youths on the benefits of hard work and the dangers of pursuing quick wealth through whatever means, including money rituals; and discouraging them from keeping the wrong company. Parents must be seen to display exemplary conduct before their youths, instil the right values in them, and guide them on the honest path to success.
The civil society, including Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), equally has a vital role to play in curbing youth involvement in money rituals. They can do this by launching public campaigns and educational programs to expose the harmful consequences of money rituals; using their platforms to challenge harmful beliefs and debunk myths and misconceptions surrounding money rituals; highlighting the achievement of youths who have attained success through legitimate means; offering free vocational training and economic empowerment opportunities for jobless youths; and offering counselling and mental health services to youths to address the underlying psychological factors that may contribute to their involvement in money rituals.
On the part of our youths, they should prioritize education, imbibe the virtue of hard work, focus on legitimate means of making money, cultivate strong moral values, avoid the dangers of falling prey to advertisers of swift wealth schemes on social media, acquire skills that are relevant to the job market, avoid the temptation to seek shortcuts through illegal activities, reject greed and materialism, and always be wary of individuals or friends who try to pressure them to indulge in illicit acts of making quick cash.
