Even her struggle to escape was resisted by the callous Mustakeem who was more prepared and exposed in assembling essential materials in the fetish ecosystem of money-making ritual.

He claimed to have told his father he was only interested in learning Quran and become a native doctor. After they were arrested, they exhibited mannerisms which communicated their hardened nature. In doing evil, Badoo in Zazoo says: Run ju pa (unpredictable facial expression), zeh. Leju pa (frown), zeh. Ma r’erin (don’t laugh), zeh Kala (Don’t care), zeh. Daju (lacking human feeling), zeh. Wuwa Ika (Do evil), zeh. These emotional expressions were exemplified in the processes leading to the murder of Sofiat. The four were unpredictable in their moves, failed to laugh, frowned and showed no remorse while confessing the iwa ika they had done. Indeed, as criminologists would argue, criminals are born and made.

To show that the use of human being for money-ritual is not a recent phenomenon, Late Juju Icon, Isaiah Kehinde Dairo (IK Dairo) documented the practice in his song, Ise Ori Ranmi Ni Mo Nse. The song encouraged people to be proud of their job and not to be greedy to the extent of unleashing the monster in them.

The use of success enhancers is not new in Nigeria where market men and women compete to outdo one another by making charm of Awórò (customer appeal remote control) to ensure that all those who come to buy products patronize a particular shop at the expense of others. In this country, there are ‘pastors’ and ‘alfas’ who ‘voodolise’ their operations but present themselves as real men of God under the anointing of the supreme being. Ritual murder is not new, it is evolving and just like Soliu and his gang of killers said, it was done because they wanted to ride exotic cars and live in beautiful houses. They have been socialized to Nigeria’s ‘I pass my neigbour attitude’ of oppression.

Are we not a Zazoo republic? Landlords rent their houses to yahoo-boys for money; hotels love them because they spend and sustain their businesses; parents pray to have them as children while girlfriends or wives put pressure on their boyfriends/husbands to do what others are doing so they can escape poverty. Parents attend end of the year party where their toddlers will be dancing to Zazoo and other morally compromising songs and they laugh it off. A son in the eastern part of Nigeria recently invited her mother to a hotel for the purpose of killing her for ritual. The mother battled to jump out of the room but not without suffering bloody injuries.

In a trending video, a child of about four years was asked which work does he want to do. He responded that Yahoo is the business in town and he would love to do yahoo to be able to spend dollars. In another video, three boys between 13 and 15 years, from broken homes reportedly migrated from Delta to Edo to hustle and become yahoo apprentices.

These are the few known. The ones we see would be a child’s play if we continue to embrace conspicuous consumption and lower dignity of labour and hardwork. We must restructure our society to reward hardwork, query, arrest and punish overnight millionaires. We must incentivize positive values and clean our airwaves of morally bankrupt songs.

We cannot be living in sin and expect grace to abound. A society with more than half of its population living inside poverty will have few people conforming to cherished norms and values when they see lavish spending on a daily basis; majority will innovate survival strategies.

Dr. Tade, a sociologist writes via [email protected]