NIGERIA-EDUCATION: No Easy Way to Root Out Cults on Campus

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, May 9 1997 (IPS) - Not a day goes by without another report of students killed or injured in cult activities on Nigeria’s university campuses, leading to renewed calls by citizens for stiffer punishment against cult members.

Recently, two cults at Lagos State University in Ojo suburb near here were engaged in a pitch battle which led to the deaths of two undergraduates, while several others were injured.

“Two cult members who took part in the ritual murder and several others are now in detention and will soon appear before a tribunal for trial over cult activities,” police spokesman Patrick Erhabor said.

Lagos State University has been the scene of several cult battles this year. In February, two other students were killed at the university following a “supremacy clash” between two groups.

According to some reports, the latest clash was a revenge mission for the February killings of the two students by the opposing group.

Cult activities, which include, to name a few, rape, the use of dangerous weapons including guns and cutlasses, and inititation ceremonies where new members drink concoctions of spirits and blood, have spread throughout Nigeria’s 31 universities and higher learning institutions.

Across the country hundreds of students have been arrested, arraigned before the courts and even suspended from university for their involvement with the cults. But the authorities have yet to find the sure-fire method to stem the rising popularity of the cults among male university students.

One citizen here who has been watching the growth of cults on campuses points out that students from wealthy and influential families comprise the main membership of the groups.

“…The members of cults are not from poor parentage. They are children of top people in the society, like even the vice chancellors, professors, rectors, senior military and police officers,” says Innocent Obi.

When these children are arrested, their parents usually use their influence to get them released through the back doors, Obi adds.

Hellen Ogumah, who was a victim of cult activities during her studies at university, also believes the problem starts in the homes of the rich and powerful. “… Most of these boys have sophisticated guns in school, which could only have been obtained from their parents who are members of the armed forces and the police,” she told IPS.

Cult activities have become so dangerous, that citizens like Obi, are calling for much stiffer punishment. “There must be a decree that any cult members caught should be publicly executed like armed robbers since some of their activities lead to deaths,” Obi says.

He also adds that the authorities should find ways to protect those who reveal the identities of the cults’ members. “The authorities of the institutions should open up opinion boxes in the schools where people could submit the names of known members of cults, because the students know them, but they fear that as soon as they mention their names, they will be attacked.”

Kunle Babalola, a psychologist, echoes Obi’s suggestion for an internal security system that isolates the cult members from the rest of the student body. “With this internal security system, they (the university authorities) should be able to round cult members up and do one or two things to them.

“Closing down institutions will make innocent students who are in the majority suffer, especially in their studies,” Babalola says, adding that it is not enough to just suspend cult members, because “they come back to the school to forment more trouble.”

Universities have started to warn new intakes that those involved in cults and caught will be expelled. Some campuses also have special physical training programmes for women students who are often assaulted and raped by the cult gangs.

Female students at the University of Calabar in the South- Eastern state of Cross Rivers, for example, are being trained in the martial arts.

This programme is one of the recommendations made by the authorities and parents at a meeting held earlier this year which came up with strategies to help women protect themselves against rapists.