Juliet Damilola
The Federal Government is set to launch a national sensitization campaign against the growing scourge of money rituals, which has already claimed many lives, especially those of women and girls, in the country.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, announced this in Abuja on Monday when he paid a working visit to the corporate headquarters of the Media Trust Limited.
“Gentlemen, our visit today is coming at a time of great concern across the country over the rising cases of ritual murders by unscrupulous people, most of them very young, who are seeking to get rich at all cost. We have therefore decided to use this opportunity to begin the process of raising national awareness on this scourge.
“For those who may still be in doubt, ritual killings have assumed a worrisome dimension in recent years. According to an NGO, Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), 150 women and girls were killed for ritual purposes between January 2018 and December 2021,” he said, while also citing recent ritual killings in other parts of the country.
Alhaji Mohammed said the National Orientation Agency (NOA) is already partnering with religious and traditional organizations as well as NGOs to forge behavioural change, especially among the youth, some of whom, he said, are afflicted by the get-rich-quick syndrome.
He also announced that he has directed the National Film and Video Censors Board, the regulatory body for films and videos in the country, to take the issue of ritual killings into consideration while censoring and classifying films and videos, in addition to engaging with stakeholders in the industry to express the concerns of the government and Nigerians on the need for Nollywood producers to eschew money ritual content in their movies.
The minister called on the media to lend its strong voice to the efforts to stamp out the growing menace of ritual killings.
Mohammed said the fact that some ritual killers said they learned the money-making tricks from some social media platforms has further given a fillip to the Federal Government’s campaign to rid social media of unwholesome content.