From pens to amulets, pupils turn cultists

In his quiet moments, Mr. Olamoyegun, as he is simply called by pupils, a former teacher at Osogbo Grammar School, Osun State, still expresses his gratitude to God for the gift of life. Several weeks after he was caught in a fight between some pupils of OGS and the neighbouring Government Technical College, in the same town, Olamoyegun still nurses a deep machete cut on his head.

The educationist, who has since been transferred to another school, claimed that he was attacked from behind during the fight and counted himself lucky to be alive to tell the story.

“I never knew that the day would turn bloody. I was trying to be a peacemaker, but the pupils were angry. They attacked me and left me for dead. I have God to thank for being alive today because I lost a lot of blood. The wound inflicted on me is yet to heal,” he told one of our correspondents.

Olamoyegun is not the only victim of such unprovoked attacks. A member of the Peace Corps of Nigeria recently had a taste of the same bitter pill when he was reportedly overpowered and tied by some pupils of St. Margaret School in Ilesa, Osun State.

The Head of the Harmonised Vigilante Group in Osun State, Alhaji Rilwan Hussein, who noted this while addressing journalists in Ede in March, said the unidentified Peace Corps member was rescued by his subordinates.

Urging teachers and security agents to pay a closer attention to pupils of the Special School for the Handicapped in Ilesa, Hussein alleged that they were involved in criminal activities. According to him, the pupils had been caught smoking and selling marijuana by his men, adding that some of the youths brought pistols to the school.

He said, “Recently we received a message that we should come to the rescue of a member of the Peace Corps tied by some students of St. Margaret School in Ilesa. We went there and rescued the person.  My boys also discovered that students of the School of Handicapped, Ilesa, smoke and sell ‘Igbo’ (marijuana). It may shock you that those boys have pistols. They have English pistols, not locally made ones.  We accosted them when we discovered they smoke and sell Igbo and they said that is the only way they too can enjoy life. This is serious.”

Cultism on the rise in schools

Findings by our correspondents have shown that cultism is on the rise. From Edo to Rivers states, gangs of teenagers have unleashed terror on their rivals, as well as their teachers, leading to the arrest and prosecution of some of them.

Earlier this year, the Edo State Commissioner for Education, Mr. Gideon Obhakhan, announced that eight secondary school pupils in the state were expelled for cultism-related activities. He added that 20 others suspected to be members of various cult groups were also under investigation.

Also, some secondary school pupils were recently arrested by the Ogun State Police Command for allegedly being members of a cult known as the Black Scorpion.

Anglican Commercial Grammar School, Osogbo

Speaking on the matter, the Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi, said, “The suspects, who were arrested by police operatives attached to Sagamu Division with the help of the Vigilante Service in Ogun State, were caught in the act of initiating another student of Remo Divisional High School, Kara, Sagamu, in a bush around the area.”

School pays N5,000 to cultists in Rivers

The Principal of Uvawhu Comprehensive High School, Ibaa in Emohua Local Government Area of Rivers State, Mr. Greg Okpaka, recently lamented that suspected cultists now demand money from the school before allowing it to hold examinations.

Okpaka told one of our correspondents that the school authority paid the sum of N5,000 to a particular cult to prevent its members from disrupting examinations in the school.

He specifically said that cult members from the community came to ask for money on several occasions before they allowed the last exam organised by the West African Examination Council to take place.

According to him, the school could not hold its internal examinations in 2014 as a result of threats from cultists.

“Cult-related activities have been disturbing academic activities. In 2014, we could not hold examinations in this school due to cult-related activities. During the last West African Senior School Certification Examination, some cultists from the community came several times to take money from the school. And the school gave them (money) to allow the exams to hold,” he said.

Okpaka also noted that the school had decided to allow religious groups to preach to the pupils in the hope that sermons could provide a solution to the problem.

He said, “The thing (cultism) is secret, but their attitude tells you that they are neck-deep in cultism. Sometimes, we see a pupil punishing another pupil whereas the latter has not done anything wrong.

“The only thing we are doing to save the situation is that we allow some religious groups to come and talk to the students about the effects of cultism. If the words of God enter their ears, they will change.”

He added that the fear of being attacked by cultists had made it difficult for him to report the development to the relevant authority.

Reacting to the development, the Rivers State Commissioner for Education, Prof. Kaniye Ebeku, said he was not aware of such an incident in the school, adding that the management of the school should have written to a relevant authority on the matter.

Ebeku, who spoke with one of our correspondents on the telephone, explained that he made it a point of duty to monitor examinations in some of the schools, adding that he had never experienced a situation where cultists tried to stop exams from taking place.

“For now, we have no information that cultists were demanding money to allow examinations to hold exams. Measures have been put in place as usual to ensure maximum security around our schools, especially during exam periods,” he said.

  “They taught us how to handle dangerous weapons”

Investigation showed that cultism is common among school children whose schools are located in the Kola Balogun and Aiyetoro areas of Osogbo, capital of Osun State. Some of the cults are known as X-Men, Young Axe-Men and other whose names are not prominent but as deadly as the well-known groups.

Some of the schools located in these areas are St. Mark’s School, St. James Anglican Grammar School and Ansar-ud- Deen School, among others.

A former member of Young Axe-Men told one of our correspondents in confidence that the group had an affiliation with the notorious ‘Aye Cult’, which is prominent in most tertiary institutions in the country.

The student, who attended one of the secondary schools in Iwo, said that leaders of the cult in some higher institutions in the South-West were responsible for the recruitment and training of the Young Axe-Men in all secondary schools in the region.

He said, “Their aim is to ensure that they have vibrant members, who would take over from them. They do this by catching the young ones and initiating them into cultism.  They taught us many things, including how to handle certain dangerous weapons and self-defence. We were taught to be at alert at all times and to be our brothers’ keepers.”

Investigation by one of our correspondents also showed that, apart from undergraduates who are recruiting and initiating Osun pupils into cultism, some of the pupils are also affiliated to some established criminal gangs in Osogbo and other towns in the state.

The Osun State Police Command had in October 2013 arrested four pupils of Ilesa Grammar School, Ilesa, during an initiation rite. The boys, whose ages were alleged to be between 14 and 18 years, were arrested after a tip-off. The two youths, who were allegedly being initiated into cultism by Dayo Oludare and Olaniran Arowobusoye, were aged 22 when policemen swooped on them.

Items recovered from them by the police include a butcher’s knife and a kitchen knife, which a police source said were intended to be used to unleash terror upon their fellow pupils. The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mrs. Folasade Odoro, confirmed the incident.

Recently, some teachers at Anglican High School and Adenle Memorial Middle School had to flee the schools’ premises as some students invaded the school and chased them around with a gun and other dangerous weapons.

The pupils were said to be some of those who suspected that they would not pass the qualifying examinations organised by the state government. The mock exams were organised to screen out pupils with poor academic performance, whose WASSCE fees would not be paid by the state government. It was gathered that the pupils who knew they could not make the list disrupted the event.

Irate pupils beat up radio station manager, vandalise property

There was mayhem recently when some pupils protested the new government policy on payment of WASSCE fees. The rampaging students, on getting to Orisun FM, a radio station owned by the Osun State Government, asked to see the Station Manager, Mr. Adeoye Bakare, but their request to be forcefully put on air to address listeners was turned down by the manager. This reportedly angered them and they descended heavily on him and other workers, vandalising vehicles parked within the premises.

Also, a female teacher in one of the secondary schools in Osogbo said she nearly paid the supreme sacrifice for flogging an unruly pupil in 2014. The teacher, who pleaded to speak on condition of anonymity said that the erring pupil reported the matter to his brother who was also a student of the school.

She said, “I was teaching that afternoon when the elder brother of this boy came brandishing a very sharp machete. It was a close shave, but luckily I escaped unhurt. Since then, I vowed not to punish any of them. My duty is to teach them and I will not stop doing that except when we are on strike. But I will never force any student to learn. If they like, let them listen. If they don’t like, they can do anything they like. My salary is not tied to their success.”

The Coordinator of the National Youth Service Corps in Osun State, Mrs. Regina Iluebbey, recently warned corps members posted to public schools in Osun State against meting out any form of punishment to pupils in their places of primary assignment.

She said, “We have talked to them. We even told them yesterday on the need to comport themselves well where they teach. They should comport themselves well, even in matters of discipline. They should let the permanent teachers or the school authority do that. They should not put themselves in danger. They should shun anything that can put their lives at risk, whether from the pupils or other people.”

Some teachers, who also craved anonymity, alleged that some of the pupils possessed charms and such metaphysical powers that could make professional juju men go green with envy. According to them, they would rather allow indiscipline in their schools than to incur the wrath of such pupils by punishing them.

A top official of the Department of State Security at the Osun State Police Command confirmed to one of our correspondents that the pupils possessed charms, adding that this was one of the reasons why they no longer respect nor fear their teachers.

The operative said, “Most of the pupils involved in cultism and hooliganism have magical powers. I think it is common here and you can see incisions on their bodies, charms of different kinds tied round their wastes with magical rings and amulets.

“We discovered that some of these youths operate okada (commercial motorcycles) after school hours and this gives them an edge over their teachers. They have small money that they take to juju men and they believe so much in this power. You dare not punish them except you are physically and spiritually strong. But, I think that juju men need to be advised against making charms for these pupils because this is jeopardising the future of the state,” he said.

Experts offer solutions

Some stakeholders believe it is good to find a way out of the problem of mass failure, but it is more important to address the issues of lack of overpopulation in Osun schools, as well as discipline and cultism.

The Public Relations Officer of the Nigerian Union of Teacher, Osun State Wing, Mr. Abolurin, while speaking in an interview with one of our correspondents, lamented the problem of cultism among secondary school pupils in the state.

“Some of them (pupils) are in one cult or another. They beat teachers at will and if you discipline them, their parents would call the governor or the deputy governor. Since nobody wants to die, teachers just leave them to do whatsoever they like. There is no discipline in schools any more. The issue of single uniform is also assisting the students to commit offences and go scot free.”

Abolurin added that the school merger, which led to a sharp increase in the population of most schools, was making it easy for “bad boys and girls from various schools to converge and carry out their evil plans.”

Though he opined that cultism among school pupils could not be eradicated, a psychologist, Prof. Toba Elegbeleye, has said that the society, parents and teachers have a role to play in reducing the menace.

I am not sure we can totally eradicate it. There are too many factors. Pupils within this age bracket are impressionable and cannot stay away from peer pressure. The age bracket is typified by youthful exuberance. They need to be guided and monitored. There should be supervision from authority figures. Bu there are other factors. What is the attitude of the society towards cultism and negative conduct? If cultism is frowned upon and there is punishment in place, it will go a long way in reducing cultism. How effective are our schools? What is the parenting style in many families? We have the authoritative, authoritarian and permissive styles. A child that is not properly cared for will be a willing tool for cultists,’’ he said.

For the National President, National Parents Teachers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Haruna Danjuma, has called on schools to improve on supervision of pupils. According to him a child has a greater tendency of being initiated into cultism in school than at home.

The Presiding Bishop of Victory Chapel International, Bishop Mike Bamidele, while suggesting solutions to the problem, said that the teaching of moral instruction and fervent prayers to pupils were some of the solutions to the increasing rate of cultism and hooliganism in the state. He said that moral decadence had contributed to the poor performance of pupils in public examinations and that without addressing it, the problems would persist.

He said, “Government should allow prayers and teaching of moral instruction in schools. The answer to the problem of cultism and hooliganism is to be taught, using different means to impart knowledge in the pupils.

“Government should not pay lip service to the teaching of morals. Continuous teaching of what is right is the way forward. Devotion in schools should not be stopped. The pupils are not doing the right things, even when they were being taught to fear God. So what do you expect to happen when you stop teaching them?”

Source: Punch

Share on Google Plus

About Ezems