Cases of ritual killing and other forms of gruesome murder have spiked in Nigeria.
While some of the incidents are linked to ritual, some are attributed to intake of hard drugs.
On May 15, 2026, the police arrested a 40-year-old man, Onyebuchi Anikwe in the Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State for allegedly attacking and killing his 60-year-old mother with a cutlass in a suspected case of ritual murder.
In April 2026, police in Kwara State arrested an individual, who had exhumed a relative’s skull in connection to the illegal trade of human body parts for ritual purposes.
Addressing journalists in Ilorin, Kwara State capital, the Commissioner of Police, Ojo Adekimi, said the successes were a result of intelligence-led policing and collaboration with other security agencies.
He said: “These achievements clearly show that criminal elements will
find no safe haven in Kwara State, while law-abiding citizens can go
about their daily activities without fear.”
In January this year, an Osun State court remanded three suspects to
the Ilesa Correctional Centre, following the targeted, gruesome ritual
murder of a Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) officer and her daughter.
Also in January this year, the Anambra State Police Command arrested a
28-year-old suspect, Friday Akonobi, in connection with the abduction
and ritual murder of a six-year-old girl, an operation allegedly
linked to a wider network and a native doctor based in Enugu.
The command’s spokesperson, Tochukwu Ikenga, who disclosed to
reporters in Awka, the Anambra State capital said that operatives
attached to the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), Awkuzu, acting on credible
information, arrested Mr Akonobi, 28, in the early hours of January 17
in Awka.
According to him, the arrest was linked to the abduction and murder of
Ozioma Nwankwo, who was abducted on May 10, 2025, in Ikwo Local
Government Area of Ebonyi.
He said that preliminary investigation revealed that the suspect was
allegedly involved in the crime, which was also connected to an
Enugu-based alleged native doctor.
The native doctor’s full name is Levi Onyeka Obieze Obu, popularly
known as Ozo Ezeani as well as “E dey play E dey show.”
Mr Ikenga noted that during interrogation, the suspect confessed to
committing the crime in collaboration with four other accomplices. He
said the suspect told the police that the victim was taken to Enugu
and handed over to the alleged native doctor.
The police spokesperson said the suspect also confessed that he and
his accomplices acted as agents for Mr Ezeani and were allegedly paid
N1 million for each virgin brought to him.
Religious angle
For the Deputy Iman of Ibuku Oluwa Ratibi Mosque in Mile 2, Lagos,
Ustaz Jamiu Aro, Islam frowns at killing in whatever form. “God
Almighty Allah does not condone ritual killing or any killing for that
matter. The Islamic injunction is that whosoever kills a fellow human
being should also be killed,” he said.
He believes that ritual killing thrives in the polity because the
system permits it.
He said: “But, I blame our constitution for the trend. When a person is suspected to have killed a fellow human being for ritual purposes, the law demands that proper investigation be conducted to establish the authenticity of the allegation and in the process, justice is always miscarried because justice delayed is justice denied.
“The constitution states that except where the courts have been convinced beyond every reasonable doubt, a suspected killer should not be found guilty. This makes it possible for ritual killers to go scot-free most of the time because there may not be enough convincing facts before the judge to convict such a suspect, even when in truth, he is actually guilty.
“This is because the western legal system which we copied will argue that truth alone is not enough to secure conviction of a criminal as such truth must be backed up by facts. That is the irony of our legal system and that is why ritual killing will continue.”
Speaking about the ritual killers, he also said: “Ritual killers are
people who do not believe that prayers could solve their problems.
Both Christians and Muslims believe that prayer is the master key to
their problems but ritual killers are people who don’t believe in the
efficacy of prayers. They want to be rich at all cost or to have
powers and they believe that prayers cannot do that. But they have
forgotten that with prayer and hard work, one could achieve greatness
in terms of wealth.
“The herbalist would convince them that with one part of the human
body or the other, they could wield enormous power or become rich
instantly. There are cases of people who were caught in the past with
human parts and they confessed that they wanted to get rich quickly
and that was why they engaged in the act as directed by their
herbalist.”
He lamented that ritual killing is like a whirlwind because it has
infiltrated both Christianity and Islam. “The practice has even spread
to churches and mosques.
“Some pastors and imams are taking part in these ritual killings. They patronize herbalists who convince them that once they perform one ritual or the other using human body parts, their churches or mosques would grow.
“This, they are made to believe, will ultimately translate to a larger congregation and eventually more money in their pockets,” he said.
Most of the ritual killers had confessed to being more wretched than
they were before they committed the atrocity.
This was corroborated by Ustaz Aro, when he said: “All in all, ritual killing is all about craze for stupendous wealth and enormous power, which most of the time do not come to reality even after the atrocity must have been committed. So, this period of politics is an auspicious time for the perpetrators because politicians would want to win elections at all cost. Others would want to be rich at all costs. So, I am not surprised that crime is on the increase now.”
Also lending his voice to the trend, the Director of Centre for Justice, Mercy and Reconciliation; a Christian, nongovernmental organisation based in Ibadan, Pastor Hezekiah Olujobi, agrees that ritual killing seems to be on the increase because people are looking for power at all cost through demonic means.
“When elections are coming, people believe that they need the life of another person to be able to achieve their political aim. They always go through kidnapping and ritual killing. The politicians who need money for his campaign would readily engage in ritual killing to raise enough money for that purpose,” he said.
He also maintained that the trend is thriving because those who are
involved in it seem to forget that the blood of Jesus Christ shed on
the Cross of Calvary is enough ransom for whatever they need in life.
He also said he was not surprised at the development because the bible
foretold that when the world would be coming to an end, things like
that would definitely be happening.
“So, I want to advise those involved in these heinous crimes against humanity to seek the face of God rather than the things of this world,” he warned.
Also speaking about the ugly development, a security expert and
President of the Association of Licensed Private Security
Practitioners of Nigeria (ALPSPN), Dr Davidson Akhimien advised that
both the government and individuals have serious roles to play in
making sure that Nigeria becomes a security-conscious country. He
suggested that security should be part of educational learning of the
Nigerian child and youth from primary one up to part four in the
university, “so that we will all be security conscious. Travellers
should always use recognized cab services as well as reputable hotels
where there are security monitoring gadgets like the CCTV camera.”
Psychological effect
Also looking at the scourge, the Consultant Psychologist, Lagos State
University Teaching Hospital, (LASUTH), Ikeja, Dr Leonard Okonkwo
attributed the increase in the menace to the fact that in Nigerian
society, people tend to celebrate people who have financial power,
without attaching any importance to the means of acquiring such
wealth. “They don’t care how you came about your wealth; they
celebrate wealth without considering how the wealth was gotten,” he
said.
Although he agreed that oftentimes people are lured into the act, adding that the psychological effect of their action is living in denial.
“They live in denial as a way of justifying their action because most times, they are not told from the beginning that they would kill somebody. So, by
the time they get to a point where they have to kill somebody so as to
become rich, they live in denial thereafter.
“You begin to hear excuses like, ‘well, it is not my fault; I didn’t know it was going to be like this and now they have told me that if I don’t do it, I am going to die, I just have to do it.’ That is denial,” he said.
He stressed that apart from living in denial, they would still come up
with some other psychological problems because they are human. Such
other psychological problems, according to him, include self-guilt as
well as becoming callous and conscienceless. “They suffer self-guilt
because even if people don’t know how they acquired their wealth, they
very well know how they got it. The knowledge of how they made their
money leads them to becoming callous and conscienceless. What other
people will ordinarily be sensitive to, they are no longer sensitive
to such issues; they become more callous,” he submitted.
