The House of Representatives has called for measures to tackle the root causes and put a stop to the rising cases of ritual killings in the country.
Following the adoption of a motion on urgent public importance by Toby Okechukwu (PDP, Enugu) at the Plenary on Wednesday, the House noted that incidents of ritual killings have assumed an alarming rate in Nigeria in recent times.
Presenting the motion, the lawmaker stated that there is an upsurge of reported ritual killings with increasing cases of abductions and missing persons in different parts of the country.
He said, in most cases, the culprits also rape, maim, kill and obtain sensitive body parts of unsuspecting victims for rituals.
He recalled that the Red Cross Society in 2017 reported that it received 10,480 reports of missing persons in Nigeria.
He said, “On January 22, 2022, three teenage suspects and a twenty-year-old reportedly killed one Sofiat Kehinde and had her head severed and burnt in a local pot in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
“Ogun State Police Command on Monday, February 7, 2022, reported that one of the suspects confessed that he learned the act of ritual killing from a video he watched on Facebook”.
Okechukwu further stated that the death of Sofiat has attracted national outrage and condemnation considering the ages of her killers.
According to him, merchants of such wicked acts often use social media as a ready tool to advertise their evil behaviours.
He further recalls the killing of Iniobong Umoren, a young woman in her 20s; after being lured to a location in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State for a job interview which was widely reported in the national dailies.
The House, therefore, called on the Inspector-General of Police to take urgent steps to increase surveillance and intelligence gathering with a view to apprehend and prosecute all perpetrators of ritual killings in Nigeria.
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