- Take the lead in ritual, fraud cases
- Blame political, religious leaders – Analysts
- What the nation must do to halt trend – Stakeholders
BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, BENEDICT NWACHUKWU, FESTUS OKOROMADU, MAYOWA SAMUEL AND BRIGHT JACOB
Stakeholders have lamented the rising cases of crimes committed by young people in Nigeria.
They also revealed factors that could prompt youths to criminal acts and ways by which the dangerous trend could be curbed.
Those concerned, including parents, guardians, lawyers, educationists, religious leaders, security experts, policemen, among others, in their separate interviews with The Point, blamed poor parental system, moral decadence, bad political leadership, peer group influence, sermons that support getting rich quick and many more as causes of delinquency among young people.
One of the cases of crimes by youngsters was the recent issue of Ejikeme Mmesoma, a 19-year-old female candidate who admitted that she manipulated her 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination result.
Mmesoma, who appeared before the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on allegations of manipulation of her UTME result, last Wednesday in Abuja, publicly admitted her involvement and tendered a written apology before the committee.
The teenager noted that ignorance played a significant role in her action, adding that she only got to know the full implication of her actions after she had manipulated her result.
While commending the young lady, her father and her lawyers for showing up at the hearing, the committee, however, advised her to stay off bad influence and learn from her mistakes.
Mmesomaa, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi in Anambra State, had claimed she scored 362 marks as against the 249 marks her JAMB records of 2023 UTME showed.
Also, the management of the Osun State University, Osogbo, had suspended a 100-Level student of the institution, Victory Ehiremen, indefinitely, following her arrest by men of the Osun State Police Command in connection with a case of armed robbery in Ikire.
Ehiremen, aged 17, and her boyfriend, Ayobami, allegedly lured the victim said to be based in Lagos State, who she met via WhatsApp to Ikire, Osun State, where he was assaulted and a sum of N1. 5m transferred from his account.
“The religious leaders celebrate evil in churches and also celebrate wealth. Some pastors will even vacate the pulpits for the rich. Some governors’ convoys now use young people as thugs and they follow the governor all about. But, one thing people don’t know is that it will always bounce back to them”
Addressing journalists on the campus of the university in Osogbo, last Thursday, the Vice Chancellor, Prof Clement Adebooye, said the management decided on the suspension after considering the statement written by the suspect and intelligence at its disposal.
“The case of Ahiante Victory Ehiremen is a shock to us, even as she is in her first year of study. I got a security report on her case, and with the official information available, an allegation of conspiracy and robbery has been established against her by the police authorities,” Adebooye had said.
Similarly, two sisters, aged 13 and 15, were arrested by operatives of the Ondo State Amotekun Corps for kidnapping themselves and demanding the sum of N100, 000 from their parents.
The teenagers, said to be in JSS3 and SSS1, respectively, reportedly stayed in a hotel from where they called their mother that they had been kidnapped and that the abductors were demanding N100, 000 for their release.
One of them told journalists that they carried out the act because their mother had been maltreating her.
“I did it because my mother maltreated me as if she was not the one that gave birth to me. I wanted to punish my mother,” she said.
Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, also arrested a 19-year-old student, Benjamin Nnamani Daberechi, for attempting to export 7.2kilograms of methamphetamine, concealed in crayfish, to Europe where he was going for undergraduate studies.
The teenage suspect was intercepted on Wednesday, July 12, during an outward clearance of passengers on Turkish Airlines flight TK 0624.
Spokesperson for the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, said, in a statement, that, while being interviewed by operatives, Daberechi claimed he was a student on his way to Cyprus for studies, but upon a thorough search of his luggage, he was found in possession of 7.2kgs of whitish substance neatly concealed inside a sack of crayfish.
“A field test of the substance, however, proved positive for Methamphetamine,” Babafemi had said.
There have been many other cases of youngsters luring and killing their girlfriends for alleged money rituals, a situation that has become a source of worry for every right thinking Nigerian, according to experts.
For a security expert, Akin Adeyi, contents in movies and social media contribute to corrupting the minds of youngsters.
Adeyi, a former Director of the Department of State Services, called on the government to control births by couples, expressing worry that most parents give birth to children they can’t train properly.
He said, “I am not totally given to heaping all blame on bad leadership. Sometimes, it may not be bad leadership that is responsible for this. It is about what the youths have chosen for themselves. This same country, we have youths that are doing fantastically well. If we want to blame poverty for this, then we should remember that there are children of the well-to-do that are also involved in these criminal acts, same as we have children of the poor that are doing so well in science and others.
“What is responsible is what these children watch in movies, see on social media and read in some books. On the one hand, we may blame the government for not providing an enabling environment for them to develop themselves. But, what about those whose children have access to develop themselves but refused? We have lost it as a country. There is this breakdown of mutual trust between the government and the youths.
“Most of these Nollywood churn out uncensored movies. The way they present our police is the worst. They teach things that are not possible in the ritual world and children see this and put it into practice. It’s a very complex problem. It’s the life you choose for yourself that you will live as a youth.”
“The religious leaders celebrate evil in churches and also celebrate wealth. Some pastors will even vacate the pulpits for the rich. Some governors’ convoys now use young people as thugs and they follow the governor all about. But, one thing people don’t know is that it will always bounce back to them,” he submitted.
The way forward, according to the expert, is birth control. “People are just having children anyhow. The government should do something about that. Another way forward is data. We need to know ourselves and have an effective neighbourhood watch system that will make us know ourselves and focus more on children’s behaviour,” he said.
Reacting, a parent, Lawrence Faniyi, said most young persons had proper home training but decided to forsake the moral lessons they received at home and follow the path of immorality and criminalities.
“I agree with you that the rate of crimes among our children is alarming. In fact, as a parent, I feel very disturbed. But, what I have discovered is that most children easily forsake the training of their parents and join bad gangs. The best parents can do is to create time for their children, counsel them against evil behaviours, provide for their needs and also pray for them. Most parents are doing all these but some children are very recalcitrant. They are easily influenced by bad things happening around them and ignore whatever the parents are saying,” he noted.
According to Faniyi, parents should not frown weary, rather, they should do better and properly instill the fear of God in their children, “because if we fail to do this, the crimes we see these children commit will be worse and when this dangerous trend boomerangs, nobody will be spared. Government should also create enabling policies that will keep our youths engaged because an idle hand is a devil’s workshop.”
A lawyer and civil activist, Mrs. Ayoola Olusegun, said lack of proper parental upbringing, celebration of riches by religious leaders and corrupt practices of political leaders were fueling crimes among young people.
She explained, “Lack of proper parental upbringing is the major cause of rising delinquency among young people. Also, peer pressure on those who didn’t grow with their parents. Another cause is the desire to get rich quickly. Our government too is not helping matters. You know when you are in a country where you see that corrupt people are the ones leading and the righteous are suffering, for somebody who does not understand or have spiritual understanding of the rights and wrongs, he will have the mentality of if you can’t beat them, why not join them.
“So, that’s the way the youths are thinking. If they cannot beat the government, let them operate at their own level and get rich quick or indulge in evil to get public praise and support.”
On the way forward, the Executive Director of a non-governmental organisation, Organisation for Public Awareness on Child and Women Rights, urged CSOs to increase campaigns and awareness against criminality among young people.
She said, “The young people should be reformed so that they can see that the future will still be bright for them without doing evil. The religious leaders need to play very active roles to ensure that they don’t preach wealth always. They should stop preaching money and start preaching real salvation. If a preacher will talk, he will devote many minutes to giving and success and they will not mention salvation throughout the sermon. We take these young ones, at their teenage ages, to church and they listen to all these sermons.
“So, religious leaders have a lot of roles to play. They should imbibe the fear of God in the hearts of the children. If these young ones have the fear of God, to hurt a fly will be difficult, how much killing a human being. No matter how poor somebody is, if somebody has the fear of God, he can’t kill another person to make wealth.”
Speaking, a religious leader, Bishop Seun Adeoye of Sufficient Grace and Truth Ministry, Okinni, Osun State, opined that crimes among young persons were results of leadership failure in Nigeria.
“We do have these cases of crimes among young ones in the past but they are not as rampant as they are today. One is worried to see youths engage in all of these criminal acts. Majority of the youths involved in these crimes are graduates, some of them graduated from schools and have first degrees and some with second degrees but have nowhere to go. Look at the case of what happened in Bayelsa State where a graduate went to steal bread and there, he was mobbed to death. This has become a source of worry and it’s a leadership failure,” he added.
‘Involvement of teens in criminality, a result of collapsed family, culture’
A school teacher, Mrs. Ngozi Obinna, said the trending evil among teenagers was because parents, on one side, had abandoned their responsibilities of ensuring that their children are trained and taught the way of God.
She said, “All these things happening are pointers that everything has collapsed in our system. There are no such values that we grew up with. The quest for game, riches and affluence has destroyed the family foundation to the extent that children have completely submitted to the control of vices abandoning the moral values.
“The ravaging poverty and death of education contributed more. The governments that should care for our welfare have abandoned us and we parents have abandoned family and societal values and norms to pursue money in order to make ends meet but the result of these actions are the destruction we are experiencing.”
A legal practitioner, Silver Emeka, heaped the blame on what he termed a failed state.
“When a country’s leadership does not have the citizen’s welfare at heart, when the leadership itself is mindless to the future of the youths, the resultant effects are what we are seeing. In fact, it is an understatement to say that the governments (past and present) have failed us. I tell you, when, as a father or mother, you fail to meet your responsibilities at home, your children will seek ways to survive at all costs, and by doing so, they will engage in various societal vices. This is exactly why our teenagers and youth are in this mess,” he said.
He, however, added that those teens and youth who were getting involved in these illicit acts had the audacity to do so because their parents had let them loose.
The Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Baptist Convention, Pastor Eben Durodola, blamed the unusual thirst for power, money and fame by youths for the rise in criminality among them.
Speaking with The Point, Durodola, who said that the growing trend was a sign that the end of the world was closer, blamed parents, religious leaders and security agencies for encouraging criminality as well as the country’s loss of values and cultural heritage.
He said, “The Bible says when we’re moving closer to the end of the world, a lot of evil things will be happening, children will be lawless, not respect their parents, things you can’t imagine will begin to happen, war between nations. So, it’s an indication of the fulfillment of the Bible that the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is very soon.
“The devil has taken over the lives of many youths because they’re looking for power, money and fame. As a result, anything they need to do to get these three things, they’re ready to do it. That’s why you find them in every form of crime you’ve never witnessed before. They’re not ready to go to school, even those in the schools, want to buy a jeep, live in Lekki, GRA, they don’t want to start from the bottom of the ladder, they want to start from the top.”
To address the matter, the cleric called for the development of the value system while urging parents to avoid actions that make teenagers unusually attracted to money.
He therefore urged the leaders to “also show example by living a lifestyle that’s not flamboyant. Government should also make provisions for many of these young ones to have jobs, either for entrepreneurship, not necessarily office work, give them money to start business, let them be engaged, set up entrepreneurship centres in all the states of the federation, pump in money, put equipment there and let people learn something. When the government does this, a lot of the youths will move away from criminal activities.”
“In the quest to get rich, I hear some parents send their children to “Yahoo Schools” to learn how to become internet fraudsters. The bottom line is that the government must be serious about law enforcement”
The Founder of Glory Dome Ministries, Kubwa, Bwari Area Council, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Gabriel Ochie, said the increase in youths’ participation in crime was a reflection of what the Nigerian society had become.
“The society, by this, I mean everyone in a position of authority/leadership, from parents at home to religious leaders, down to the managers and supervisors in our work place, to the government itself. The present situation shows that the decay in the society has reached its climax and unless something urgent is done, it will consume everybody. A society where impunity reigns can only lead to a state of anarchy,” he lamented.
On her part, the Proprietor of New Era Academy, Zuba, FCT, Mrs. Elizabeth Okpere, also attributed the criminality among children to parental and societal upbringing.
“A situation where parents support their children when they do something wrong gives room for repeating or reinforcement. Children learn faster from what they see than what is said. That is why we use pictures as teaching and learning aids. The question we should be asking is what are we as a society showcasing to our children? In the educational sector, it is no longer secret that parents pay for their children to pass exams.
“In our higher institutions, every day, we hear of scandals. The unfortunate part is that when people are caught, they are not punished, especially when you’re rich. So, the schools are not better because they are a reflection of the society itself. In the quest to get rich, I hear some parents send their children to “Yahoo Schools” to learn how to become internet fraudsters. The bottom line is that the government must be serious about law enforcement. When people are caught committing an offence, they must be punished. From breaking the tariff light to stealing from public funds, our children will learn that it doesn’t pay to get involved in crime,” she said.
A secondary school teacher based in Abia State, Kenneth Ossai, said, “The involvement of young people in crime calls for serious sober reflection from all and sundry. It is the failure of society, government and the family.
“Many years ago, you hardly heard or read about young people who got involved in crime. Rather, their minds were focused on their studies or vocations. They either knew then that companies would come for their services immediately they were through with school, or that at some point in their lives, they would have to fend for themselves.
“So, hard work was so much glorified and the environment those young ones lived in back in the day encouraged positive growth and helped to make their dreams valid. Today, unfortunately, the standards of the society, government and the family have fallen so much so that mediocrity has become the order of the day and excellence has taken a back seat.”
“There is no longer dignity in hard work. Many students and other young people now want to take short cuts so that they can ‘belong’ and so that the societies they live in will not mock them,” he lamented.
