The Ezinano Community in Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra State recently announced a N10 million bounty for anyone with information that could lead to the arrest of perpetrators of recent killings. No fewer than 22 lives were lost when a group of gunmen invaded the venue of the New Yam festival and started shooting indiscriminately. Most of the victims had come home to join in the celebration. The State Police Command described the incident as a “cult-related clash” which has plagued Anambra State for years, and Awka has remained the epicentre of the violence.

It is concerning that cult Wars and gang violence have exacerbated the climate of lawlessness and fear in the country. The menace has become so widespread that drug peddlers and other sundry miscreants are now being recruited into the fold. In many states across the country, cultists of various stripes act with impunity, killing, raping and maiming victims while causing widespread destruction. In a gruesome escalation of the cult war in Awka, three brothers from the same mother have fallen victim. The latest casualty, simply called Nonso, was killed in broad daylight near Amaku Teaching Hospital. Nonso’s younger brother, and eldest brother had also met a brutal end in a previous violence, leaving their mother in deep shock.

To be sure, cultism is not new in Nigeria. For a long time, several people have identified with one form of cultism or another either for personal protection or to safeguard certain interests. But today, cultism has become almost like a status symbol, especially on our campuses while members kill sometimes for reasons as flimsy as being snubbed by a student of the opposite sex. Young men and women unleash violence and pains on their victims, families and the larger society. For them, the association with a cult group, usually after an oath of initiation, is a ticket to prestige and greatness.

But the menace has leapt from the campuses of our institutions of higher learning to the streets and these criminal gangs operate without restraints, perhaps because they have powerful backers within the society. Not too long ago, some prominent personalities were among 67 suspected cultists arrested and quizzed in Benin City, the Edo State capital, by men of the special squad deployed in the state by the police authorities at the time, to curb the growing killings and cult activities. But the impact of such interventions is hardly noticeable. Gang violence among cultists has remained one of the major causes of insecurity in Edo State.

There is hardly a day when some young men and women would not fall victims to this goring spectre of criminal violence most of them because of battles for turf between rival cult groups. These are in addition to collection of illegal levies, political disputes, chieftaincy affairs or sheer criminality leading to armed robbery or kidnapping. A recent report by the Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) revealed that cult and gun violence driven by supremacy and territorial control led to the death of more than 180, most of them innocent victims in Edo between 2021 and 2023. And within a period of six months recently in Ogun State, 24 people, including a traditional chief died in cult-related violence.

No sane society should condone this form of barbarity that constitutes a threat to national security and put the future of many young people in jeopardy. We call on government at all levels to apply the sanctions, many of which are in the law books but hardly enforced. It is time to deal ruthlessly with the problem of cultism, including responding appropriately against the sponsors of this errant social behaviour. (THISDAY Editorial)