Yahoo-Yahoo, Ritual Killing And Get-Rich-Quick Syndrome
It is often said that the more things change, the more things remain the same. The truism in this statement may be assumed to be location and situation-dependent but on a wider scope and objective analysis, it fits well in describing what has been happening, for a long time, in Nigeria and to Nigerians!
Historical facts, concerning this, abound. In fact, today’s Nigerians do not interrogate history deeply enough in order to avoid current and future pitfalls. We are not proposing, here, the use of today’s standard for assessing yesterday’s occurrences! No, it is far from that! What we are say
ing, in line with the words of Anthony Akinwale, a Roman Catholic priest, is that “history is the memory of a people…so a people without a memory cannot function effectively. A nation without consciousness of its history is left to drift”. Nigeria is actually drifting! That is what is being experienced today in a country that has not been able to transform itself into an acceptable nation!
Let us look deeply at our history and stop deceiving each other!
What are we driving at here? It basically has to do with the get-rich-quick syndrome ‘currently’ ravaging the collective psyche of many young and old in this country. Ritual killings are already incorporated, as ‘upgraded’ versions, into the equations for achieving criminalities. These are for the purpose of acquiring instant wealth and power! Yes, these societal ills have, rightly, attracted public condemnation in recent time. We agree that these ills must be totally condemned in strong terms. They cannot be condemned enough because the future is increasingly threatened with these manifestations! Nevertheless, can we, as a people, confidently say that we are not paying lip service to these condemnations and the fear of future threats from what we currently condemn?
We ask this question because similar and other past vices and negative occurrences that attracted condemnations, in Nigeria, reoccurred in ‘repackaged’ and magnified dimensions as ‘new’. In other words, most of the vices being experienced in Nigeria, now, are not really ‘new’ but more of regular ‘resurgence’. This will persist as long as we continue to fail in acting our talk!
Historically, our various societies sometimes had some ‘bad eggs’ that were never encouraged! In many cases, a typical society actively and successfully went against these ‘bad eggs’. There were even cases necessitating ostracisation to deter future replication of evil deeds! Things were not this bad in those days partly because of the series of backlash from the society. However, going back into recent history, it is clear that Nigerians – as they are currently doing – failed to dis-incentivise many of these societal ills for unclear reasons that are not unlikely to be linked to weakened societal moral fibre.
Change is the only constant thing in life, so our societal values have changed, mainly, for anything other than good! Deception will not do us any good here; collectively, as a people, the drastic decline in our moral values is striking! The vices that were frowned at in the past, with the passage of time, became ‘normalised’ through institutionalised warped value system! Hence, these vices festered and took seemingly ‘new’ forms – today! The ‘new’ vices have firm connection with many of the recent past negative occurrences!
