Young people in the axis of Edo and Delta States have long been endangered amid a silent public of parents, teachers, law enforcement, religious leaders, government and the media.
How many persons in that region of Nigeria raised the alarm when over 90% of all the hotel accommodations in places like Benin City, Warri and Ughelli were being and still often being occupied by teenagers between the ages of 12 and 20 years? I ask from first-hand knowledge and practical experience.
With an admixture of drug abuse, fetish sex, and the practice of the occult, these young persons in that region have managed to create a new economy of ‘internet scam’ that has literally sustained the hotel industry in that area and, to a large extent, the state economy.
Witch doctors and, in some cases, ‘mammy water’ churches opened spiritual centres known as ‘Hustle Kingdom’ (HK) that offered to secondary school students and those awaiting entrance to higher school weeklong courses on how to use charms, concoctions, incantations and complex rituals to manipulate receivers of scam emails and SMS requests for passwords to part with their vast sums of money to them, in the hundreds and sometimes millions of dollars.
In my one-time interaction with Marcus Ekure, a youth leader in Ughelli, in 2022, he claimed that there were over 5,000 HKs in Delta State alone at that time.
A social epidemic was brewing, yet there was a silent public that tacitly accepted the new yahoo-yahoo economy, secretly glorifying the idea that the boys were no longer interested in armed robberies but had devised harmless ways to scam the white man of his riches. What folly!
These young people empirically witnessed the mesmerizing power of mind over money using charms, and in the morning, when a mature traveller like me shows up for breakfast at the restaurant of a two or three-star hotel, he is shoved aside for an army of ‘sweet’ looking small boys and girls with hippy and colourful hairstyles and locks, taking over the entire place.
Trust me! Whether in Ughelli, my home town or Warri and Benin City, I have had cause to challenge the management of the hotels about why they allowed such abominable abuse of hotel services by such young people, but I was hushed into dignified silence with the same answer that those boys were responsible for the survival of business and security of the employees of the hotels.
Whereas I do not claim much knowledge in metaphysics or esoteric sciences, my Christian faith made it empirically verifiable that actions (except covered by grace) are bound to have repercussions. So, what were we expecting when these people sold their souls for money through rituals? They changed! Their natural inclinations (DNA) were corrupted.
Today, there was panic all over Nigeria that the police have arrested over one hundred young persons involved in a planned gay wedding in Warri, in Delta State. I have issued a statement urging the police to respect their rights. I did that with a sense of responsibility and to avoid repeating what happened before.
That was in 2005, when I returned to Ughelli after my Law School graduation. I literally saw burnt and charred dead bodies of many boys and young people (perhaps up to 50 in number) in various corners of the streets of Ughelli town.
They were said to be killed extrajudicially with machetes by the ‘Ughelli Bakassi Boys’ in front of their family members as they begged for mercy. Their offence was that some other youth mentioned their names and that they belonged to an armed robbery gang.
I fled the Ughelli town not too long after that savage, and that partly influenced my career in human rights. I am not in human rights for money or commercial gain. One day, the Nigerian public will be shocked to realise that I have yet to receive a cent from any international donor to promote human rights in Nigeria. I have literally spent my personal earnings to drive most of my campaigns.
The reported alleged planned gay wedding in Warri, if true, will be the beginning of youths that have gone askew, led on by an irresponsible public.
While I will never promote LGBTi ways of sexual orientation, nothing will make me deny the humanity of persons involved in such practices. The ‘I am born that way’ argument appeared unimpeachable by Western opponents to LGBT rights; hence, they have received the statutory and judicial stamps.
Holders of traditional beliefs and religious adherents don’t know what is coming because of their complacency with the past. There is a cosmic contest for the minds of men to redefine humanity.
I see national church movements that are so unprepared, for example and a Nigerian social milieu that will have nothing but hate and violence in reaction to a creeping but strong agenda to destroy the Nigerian youth, especially of Mid-Southern origins.
There is an urgent need to reclaim the social spaces for the good and future of the young people of this country. In the past, the young people of the Benin and Warri areas were known for their proclivities for sports and academics.
It was not by accident the Nigerian media and national sports landscape were, at a time and to date, dominated by people from that area. It was not an accident.
When successive state governments, religious leaders and big corporations abandon the youth development agenda, they can only expect as a society to reap an epidemic of anti-social behaviour from the youth population.
So, Now let’s kill all the youths who have become so demonic. No! It is the same way we have abandoned persons suffering from psychoses, depression or dementia hence, they roam the streets of some towns as mad men and women.
Our society must learn to be more responsible and compassionate. Life is humanity and far beyond the rats’ race hustle in competition to earn a living and boast a living.
By Frank Tietie
Tietie is a lawyer and social commentator writes from Abuja.
