The view that ritual killings of whatever kind are seriously immoral, and evil must receive major support from all of us; in fact, it cannot be gainsaid.
We must note straightaway that ritual killings are a symptom of our irrational cultural history and wrong religious dogma that has negatively impacted our current political and social ethics.
For centuries backward societies thrived on ritual killings, slaughtering animals. or human beings to appease deities.
Ritual killings used to be part of rites of passage in some communities, especially during coronations or celebration of the exit of a monarch.
The Scottish anthropologist J.G. Frazer documents this phenomenon in his seminal work The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, asserting that the highest form of sacrifice was human sacrifice!
Aspects of this belief are also well documented by Cardinal Francis A. Arinze in his book Sacrifice in Igbo Traditional Religion.
Without exceptions, our newspapers, report time after time and almost daily the spate and surge of ritual killings that occur in different parts of our country.
There are scary spots in certain towns and cities in Nigeria where people simply disappear. The reports in different guises reveal what Nigerians are doing to Nigerians.
They reveal and illustrate how Nigerians undermine the humanity of fellow Nigerians who are usually killed in hideously brutal and immoral manners and acts. In some cases, the ritual murderers cannibalize their victims.
They consume parts of their killed victims as part of the ritual. Why do ritual murderers murder their innocent victims ranging from infants to adult human beings?
The obvious answer relates to the questions of money, wealth, power, influence, longevity, and presumed sustenance of communal well-being by those who wrongly believe in the rightness of their ritual activities and practices.
Some acclaimed rich persons and people of influence and several politicians and high government officials and personages as well as authorities of our traditional institutions allegedly engage and partake in the practice of using human beings for rituals in order to cement, consolidate and sustain positions, affluence, power, authority and prolong their lives.
Even some socalled pastors and religious personages indulge in ritual murders to guarantee the growth and expansion of their churches and religious places.
Some arrested suspects have made confessions pertaining to these personages and their accomplices.
We wonder why in the 21st century of scientific and technological progress and advancement in every field of human endeavour the sanctity of human life means little or nothing to some of our compatriots who attribute their success and high existential value to the killing of human-beings.
It is barbaric, retrogressive, and antithetical to all that humanity holds sacred.
That even young boys, several of whom are in their teens, are notoriously known today as ‘Yahoo Boys’ on account of their ill-gotten wealth allegedly from ritual murders, is one of the greatest misfortunes that our country has known.
The Daily Times strongly rejects the ethic of the ‘Yahoo Boys’ that is reprehensible and morally impermissible.
This ethic as well as that of their bloodmoneyed prosperous elders whom they have copied and are still copying prevents an actualization of a possible future of value for our country.
Clearly, a really healthy and human future of value will be denied us if nothing substantial is done to halt the ritual killers from gaining further ground in our country.
There are also reported stories of the sale of human parts in some cemeteries or public mortuaries.
These body parts are bought by highly placed Nigerians that revel in fetish things. It is sad that while young people in Silicon Valley are busy developing applications to fetch them millions of dollars, some of our youths believe that they have to kill and use human sacrifice to get on in life.
We believe that ritual murderers ranging from the ubiquitous Otokoto killers of Owerri to ‘Badoo Boys’ of Ikorodu, Lagos to ‘Nigerian Burghers’ from Ghana to ‘Yahoo Slicers’ of Abraka, Delta State and the Sunday Shodipes of Oyo State and several others elsewhere be seriously discouraged through institutional methods and mind reorientation.
Very importantly, The Daily Times recommends as follows: a crimeand-punishment-system should be entrenched in the society; worship of money should be discouraged in all ramifications; our youths should be retrained on better values and weaned from immoral behaivour and attitudes through efficient curricula and school system of rich values; drastic reconstruction and improvement of the economy to redress issues of acute poverty/ hunger and to create employment for the jobless.
These should help a great deal to discourage and stop people from indulging in ritual murders. A drastic revamping of our educational system that would promote critical reasoning is also apposite now.
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This would make people see the deception and folly in thinking that they would make money and gain social influence, mobility, political power, and positions through ritual killings rather than through hard work and honest undertakings and dealings.
The appropriate authorities should compel owners of fabulous and exotic cars, houses, and properties to prove the legitimacy of what they own and their sources of income.
The Daily Times firmly believes that the origins and problems of ritual killings are avoidable and solvable if these recommendations are not lost on the legitimate authorities.
A special arm of the police should be created which is dedicated to resolving all ritual killings in the country in order to arrest the problem in its roots.
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