By Jude Atupulazi
Perhaps the greatest takeaway of the yuletide in terms of social activities was a burial ceremony in an Anambra Community where friends of the chief mourner donated money running to over a billion Naira to their friend who was burying his mother.
They did not stop at that. A kind of register containing all the individual donors and the amount paid was posted on social media. In it we saw people who donated over ten million Naira, ten million and other millions. This was after a video had gone viral showing the chief mourner and his friends making noise in front of the mother’s house which was nothing to write home about.
Before then too, one of them came with a trailer load of cows, numbering 47, which he donated to the the chief mourner.
The above depicts the average lifestyle of our young men of today to whom what matters is the end justifying the means. When they make it they take to the mountain tops to proclaim they have arrived. They are then hailed and venerated by society, sending a message to gullible youths that all that matters is money.
While it’s not written anywhere that people cannot spend their money the way they want, it however goes against decency when that money is spent in a garish way.
The problem with many young people in Nigeria is their unnecessary loudness while flaunting their money. This attitude tends to pitch them against their hosts when they stay in foreign lands. You see them blocking streets, and yelling like mad. They throw money about as if they plucked them from trees.
You attend a function and see a young man bringing out wraps of money, sometimes of one million each, and throwing them in the air to the cheers of other young men who soon begin to aspire to be like that person spraying money.
And of course, it goes without saying that many of them do not make their money out of genuine pursuits. Would anyone who made money genuinely waste millions at a single event? Who does that?
Any wonder we hear about xenophobia in South Africa? The locals get jealous of our people because of the way they flaunt their money and attack them at the slightest opportunity. Though such attacks are wrong, we should however look at the cause.
Today, the role models of our young men are young native doctors, yahoo boys and co. And we think that vices like kidnapping and armed robbery will ever stop? No way!
They know that once they make money, society bows to them and that’s that. A terrible situation, I tell you.
Recently, Anambra Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, announced measures to combat crime in the state, among which is going after the so-called native doctors. I love this aspect so much because these so-called native doctors are part of the problem. If they’re not making “protective charms” for criminals, they’re also flaunting their wealth illicitly made from criminals that patronize them.
It has indeed become commonplace to see many young men today posing as native doctors. It has become the new fad. Their shrines are everywhere and they don’t have compunctious in doing anything for the money.
They have contributed to our warped society which worships wealth. This is why many young men openly advertise being yahoo boys and society tends to accept them. In the various communities, you’ll hear other young men proclaiming, “Chi Boy egbugo ozu”, “Emy Boy apatago ike”, terms used in describing people who have made it.
But the problem is that many of these boys are fraudsters and ritual killers. It’s not as if this is not known by many but no one cares a hoot. If you complain they tell you to go and make your own money.
See why kidnaping, fraud and armed robbery won’t be stopping any time soon? Institutions that should be challenging these anomalies have all collapsed and become part of the mess and that paints a very bleak picture of the future indeed. The bug has eaten deep.
I’ll round off by sharing an article on our topic by Nnamdi Jude which goes thus:
The most heinous crime least criticised by people is yahoo yahoo.
The reluctance to criticise this crime and its perpetrators can easily be attributed to the indulgence of having close friends and relations as perpetrators. So, under every viral post condemning yahoo yahoo criminals, there are several comments defending them with such claims as: “government no give dem job,” “they’re not worse than our politicians,” “they’re just making oyibo people pay for their colonial crimes against us,” yada yada.
These claims would have been funny if bank accounts of honest Nigerians weren’t being emptied every day by yahoo yahoo scammers. They would have been funny if old retirees weren’t being scammed of his/her life savings.
A civil servant toils for 30 years, gets their gratuity after standing in the rain and under the sun for years, only for their account to be wiped by boys who could be as young as 16, 17, or 18, and the money spent in one night “shutting down” the club with girls. The poor victim is neither a politician nor an oyibo, so what was their crime? What was the crime of our domestic help in her late fifties who was called on the phone some days ago by supposed Access Bank staff and told to send a code sent to her phone?
With the large support it enjoys, yahoo yahoo has since become a euphemism for many shockingly evil money-making ventures including organ harvesting and human rituals. So, a person condemns a ritual killer but defends his friend who does the same because his friend’s crime has been christened yahoo yahoo. For the same reason, a vendor, who wouldn’t want to be patronized by known ritual killers and organ harvesters, prays to God to send yahoo yahoo customers.
But what about parents and older siblings who dance and thank God when their 19-year-old son or brother returns home from the university in a shiny Benz car or gifts them iPhones, one or two years after a piece of family land was sold to pay his admission fees? What happened to questioning sudden wealth or wealth without enterprise? Is it the fear of being called “enemy of progress” or the greedy thirst for material things that has numbed our conscience?
Need we say more?