In September in Lagos State, a 16-year-old boy lured a four-year-old child into a bush, strangled him and removed his intestines, and private organs.
While on Oct. 1, in Kwara, police discovered the corpse of a teenage girl with her two eyes removed in Ilorin.
Stakeholders have identified several key factors contributing to the rise in the orgy of ritual killings including:
Among these, is poverty and unemployment factor. They said the economic crisis had driven many young people to desperate and criminal acts.
They similarly said the get-rich-quick mentality, where the glamorisation of sudden wealth often portrayed in the social media, had the propensity of pushing individuals to seek supernatural means of acquiring money.
According to them, the weak law and failure of security agencies to swiftly investigate and prosecute offenders have emboldened criminals.
The stakeholders also listed the factor of societal decadence where some traditional and religious leaders either remained silent or had become complicit in these practices.
Most importantly, they attributed the breakdown of family structure, resulting in the lack of proper parental guidance to the moral decline among youth.
Security expert, Mr Seyi Babaeko, Managing Director of Absolute Security and Advance Protocol Ltd., described the rise in ritual killings as a reflection of deeper socio-economic and cultural issues.
“The desperation for wealth, belief in supernatural influences, and erosion of moral values have fueled this menace,” he said.
Badeko urged government to among others strengthen the criminal justice system for swift prosecution of offenders.
“Government needs to intensify intelligence gathering and surveillance to dismantle ritual killing networks.
“It should launch public enlightenment campaigns to debunk the belief that human sacrifice brings wealth, as well as prioritise job creation to reduce the desperation driving individuals toward crime.”
Another security expert, Mr Christopher Oji, emphasised that ritual killings, particularly among cyber fraudsters (popularly known as Yahoo boys) had become disturbingly normalised in the Nigerian society.
“You see a 17-year-old boy driving a N30 million car, and nobody questions his source of income,’ he said.
He blamed government negligence and societal indifference for the rising cases, adding that many missing persons in Nigeria were likely victims of ritual killings.
Oji urged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) to scrutinise the sources of wealth among young people.
“The EFCC should go beyond cybercrime investigations and begin questioning the sudden wealth of individuals, especially youths.”
The Chief Operating Officer of DOHS Care Foundation, Mrs Ololade Ajayi, took to her X (formerly Twitter) handle. @OlolaTohRhea, to highlight how ritual killings often targeted women and girls.
“This reflects violent commodification of female bodies. Women are often lured by individuals intending to either use their genitals or breasts for rituals,” she stated.
Ajayi called for stricter laws and justice for victims, emphasising that femicide(the intentional killing of women due to gender motives) must be addressed urgently.
A cleric, Pastor Victor Oke of the Assemblies of God Church, Oyobo, attributed the rise in ritual killings to the loss of respect for human life.
” Human life is sacred. No one has the divine mandate to take another person’s life for ritual purposes,” he said.
Oke urged Nigerians to report suspicious activities to law enforcement agencies and work collectively to end the menace.
The stakeholders agree that addressing ritual killings requires a multi-pronged approach.
They urged government’s urgent intervention in the areas of strengthening law enforcement, judicial reforms and job creation.