Teenagers, Mothers, and the Dark Creed of “Fast Money”
Nigeria’s descent into the grotesque is marked by the chilling rise of ritual killings, a macabre trend fueled by the lust for “fast money.” Beneath our loud proclamations of morality and spirituality, a disturbing reality festers — teenagers barely old enough to vote are butchering relatives and friends in pursuit of sudden wealth.
The most haunting example remains the case of Samuel, 18, who strangled his own mother, Christiana, as she slept at their home in Ologbo, Ikpoba-Okha LGA, Delta State. Acting on the instructions of a native doctor nicknamed One Love, Samuel raped his mother’s corpse and prepared to mutilate it for a promised N50,000 ritual fee. His grandmother’s timely alarm cut short the unspeakable horror.
Six years later, the specter of blood rituals has not abated. Instead, it has metastasized. From Amaeze, Nsukka in Enugu State, where a youth butchered four of his family members in November 2024, to Ogun State, where teenagers confessed to cooking the severed head of a girl for “money rituals,” the nation is stalked by a grim army of bloodthirsty youths.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that in just six months leading to January 2025, over 150 ritual killings were officially recorded. Security agencies admit the actual figures may be far higher, as many cases are buried in silence or masked by superstition.
In Anambra State, three suspected ritualists — Chidozie Nwangwu, Onyebuchi Okocha, and Ekene Igboezekwe — were recently arraigned, exposing an underground network of charlatan “pastors” and self-styled native doctors. Shockingly, 18 out of 53 implicated pastors reportedly fled after security operatives closed in. Governor Charles Soludo lamented:
> “Bad people have entered our land. They are not invisible; they are human beings, and we know them. If you see any of them, expose them.”
Yet beyond arrests and public outrage, a darker question gnaws: Why are Nigerian boys embracing ritual murder as a path to success?
Sociologists argue that toxic family systems, absentee fathers, failing schools, and Nigeria’s ravenous materialism converge to produce boys warped by desperation. “Yahoo Boys” — internet fraudsters masked as forex and bitcoin traders — dominate their peers’ aspirations. Nollywood glorifies ritual wealth, while social media amplifies stories of sudden riches without effort.
The crisis deepens as institutions neglect boys altogether. A senior staff of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) admitted privately that their Nigerian programmes focus almost exclusively on girls and women because the government has no policy framework for boys. “The neglect of young males is a recipe for disaster,” he warned.
Indeed, the disaster is here. From teenagers disemboweling classmates to mothers handing over their own children for rituals, the erosion of fatherhood and the distortion of masculinity is feeding a monstrous creed of cruelty and carnage.
Masculinity — once shaped by guidance, discipline, and responsibility — is now caricatured in films, distorted by feminist-misandrist narratives, and drowned by poverty’s chokehold. Boys, stripped of role models, are filling the vacuum with ritual knives, clay pots, and the ashes of their victims.
Until Nigeria confronts this crisis — by reforming family systems, restoring fatherhood, rehabilitating education, and curbing the toxic glorification of blood wealth — the cycle will continue.
The gory headlines will multiply. Mothers will keep falling to their sons’ hands. Families will be slaughtered in their sleep. And the hymn of progeny as the new fiend will echo across the land.
Nigeria has become a blood-money nation. The question is: how much longer can we survive it?
PIONEER NEWS 