The race is on – the rat race.
Everyone wants to get rich – very rich and quickly too. Gone are the
days when people believed in the natural principles of sowing seeds,
watering, weeding and nurturing while waiting patiently for them to
flourish and flower to fruition. These days, many people want to get rich by all means, even if it is more by crook than by hook. But, there the problem lies.
“As much as you cannot blame anyone for aspiring to become
prosperous, what is questionable, however, are the means and methods of
attaining the riches. Currently, money has become a god to be
worshipped.
“Millions of people see it, not as a means to an end but
the end itself. To them, that end justifies the means. They would,
therefore, cheat, lie, prostitute, trade in hard drugs, kill innocent
souls or commit ritual murder just to get the money. Yet, it is God’s
great wish for us to enjoy riches without sorrows attached.”
This quotation is from the introduction to my motivational book, ‘The Biblical Billionaires,”
which God inspired me to write a few years back. The salient message
here is that God can make us rich, prosperous, powerful and famous
without shedding innocent blood. If He did so for Abraham, Isaac,
Jotham, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Esther, Gideon and Kings Ahasuerus,
Hezekiah, Asa as well as Solomon in the biblical time, why not you?
He is the same God, yesterday, today and forever. Is He
not the one that made Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Aliko
Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Oprah Winfrey and Folorunsho Alakija rich? That
is the million-naira question. We shall soon come to the answer.
But for now, the critical issue of the methods we adopt,
both as individuals and groups, to make money came to mind with the
recent discovery of the hideout of the den of ritual murderers at
Obadeyi Ajala street, Ijaiye, along the densely populated axis of the
Lagos-Abeokuta expressway.
Yet, few days, later a similar one was unveiled at
Ile-Zik, Ikeja, Lagos. According to eyewitness accounts, the crowd that
formed at the Obadeyi scene was shell-shocked by the discovery of the
ritualists’ hell-hole right under their noses! The den was exposed by a
female sweeper who heard the horrific cry of a victim screaming for
help. It came from an underground tunnel, which linked to a canal at
Obadeyi Street. With the intervention of some people, a baby was rescued, two men got lynched and two others were arrested.
In instant reaction to the bestial and barbaric act of
kidnapping innocent citizens for ritual murders, the outraged crowd
allegedly set ablaze one of the suspects.
Investigations have so far revealed that he was one of a
28-member group operating under the canal. Items recovered from the
shrine included dismembered bodies, charms, carvings, native soap and
white clothes stained with human blood. Perhaps, the discovery will
provide answers to the persisting puzzle of missing persons around the
area.
Nonetheless, these sordid scenarios have ignited the
pertinent questions: Who, for instance, are the masterminds of the orgy
of killing hapless souls all for blood money? Who have they been selling
human parts to and for what reasons? With the culture of crass impunity
in the country, will these bloodthirsty vampires in human skin ever be
brought to justice? I have my fears.
One is sore worried about the depth of depravity our
society has sunk into. For instance, how do we begin to explain the
obnoxious policy of giving amnesty to terrorists, or paying high-profile
Boko-Haram insurgents in hard currency to release Chibok girls?
What about that of a state governor openly confessing to
paying off known killer-herdsmen so as to sheath their swords against
unarmed citizens? Whatever
happened to the Clifford Orji saga of the heady ‘80s? Are we ever going
to see the end of the alias Evans evolving soap drama series, given the
long-winding judicial process?
The truth in all of these is that we are in a state of
anomy where the family unit has broken down. Many fathers and mothers
are no longer there as the protective and providing parents for their
children, especially in their growing up years. In their place, they
find solace in the company of denizens of the street. These lure them
into all manner of crimes, beginning with pick pocketing, to armed
robbery, drug trafficking and kidnapping to acts of terror.
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