…Charges IGP Usman To Move Against Perpetrators
By John Ugo
The House of Representatives has charged the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Usman Baba Alkali, to take urgent steps towards stemming the alarming increase of ritual killings across the country.
The House also declared a national emergency on ritual killings and asked the National Orientation Agency stakeholders and the media to initiate a campaign towards changing the orientation of citizens for a better society.
The call by the lawmakers came as a result of a motion of urgent public importance by the Deputy Minority Leader in the house, Hon. Toby Okechukwu, during the plenary on Wednesday.
Okechukwu in his motion stated that the incidents of ritual killings had assumed an alarming rate in parts of the country and should be stopped.
He lamented the upsurge of reported cases of ritual killings with increasing cases of abductions and missing persons in different parts of Nigeria.
The lawmaker free attention to the rampant incidents of rape of young girls and women, the killings, and the removal of sensitive body parts of unsuspecting victims for rituals purposes.
He also raised the alarm that the Red Cross Society had in 2017 reported that a total of 10,480 missing persons were reported in Nigeria.
According to him, “On Jan. 22, three teenage suspects and a 21-year-old reportedly killed one Sofiat Kehinde and severed her head and burnt in a local pot in Abeokuta, Ogun.
“The police command in Ogun on Feb. 7, reported that one of the suspects confessed that he learned the act of ritual killing from a video he watched on Facebook”.
He further pointed out that the sudden death of five year old school girl Hanifa attracted national outrage and condemnation considering the age of the suspected killers.
The lawmaker argued those behind the wicked acts often use the social media as a tool to advertise their evil actions.
He recalled the gruesome murder of Miss Iniobong Umoren, a young graduate in her 20s; who in search of job was lured to a particular location in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State for a job interview, only to be murdered.
While citing the the gruesome killings and activities of Badoo Boys in Lagos State, he explained that “Ritual killing have become a predominant theme in most home made movies which if not checked, will make our younger to begin to view it as an acceptable norm.”
The House urged the Executive Director, National Film and Video Censors Board to rise to the mandate of the agency as the clearing house for all movies produced in the country.