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BREAKING: Reps Call For State Of Emergency Over Ritual Killings

Published

3 years ago

Feb 9, 2022.

The House of Reps has called for a State Of Emergency Over Ritual Killings

EKO HOT BLOG reports that the House of Representatives on Wednesday called on the Federal Government to declare a national emergency on ritual killings happening across the country.

The House called on National Orientation Agency, parents, heads of schools, religious leaders, and the media to undertake a campaign to change the trend.

It also called on the executive director, National Film and Video Censors Board to rise to the mandate of the agency as the clearinghouse for all movies produced in the country; and mandated the House Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values to report back to the House within four weeks.

The House further asked the Usman Alkali-Baba, 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 and mandate the House Committee on Police Affairs to report back to the House within four weeks.

The development was part of the resolutions reached by the lawmakers on a motion of urgent public importance entitled ‘Need to Curb the Rising Trend of Ritual Killings in Nigeria’. Moved by the Deputy Minority Leader, Toby Okechukwu at plenary.

Moving the motion, Okechukwu lamented the upsurge of reported ritual killings with increasing cases of abductions and missing persons in different parts of the country, which in most cases, the culprits also rape maim, kill and obtain sensitive body parts of unsuspecting victims for rituals.

The lawmaker recalled that the Red Cross Society in 2017 reported that it received 10,480 reports of missing persons in Nigeria.

He noted that on January 22, 2022, three teenage suspects and a 20-year-old reportedly killed one Sofiat Kehinde and had her head severed and burnt in a local pot in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Okechukwu also said the Ogun State Police Command on Monday reported that one of the suspects confessed that he learned the act of ritual killing from a video he watched on Facebook.

Ritual killings have recently become a trend across the country as videos clips of such activities involving adults and even teenagers continue to emerge online.

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