As of December 2021, when Habeeb Okikiola, the Zazoo crooner collaborated with Olamide Adedeji (Badoo) and Poco Lee to release the trending single Zazoo Zeh, Sofiat Kehinde, the 17-year-old teenager gruesomely murdered at Oke Aregba community in Abeokuta, Ogun State by organised criminals led by her 18-year-old boyfriend, Soliu Majekodunmi, and three associates — Mustakeem Balogun, 19, Gafar Lukmon, 19, and Waris Oladeinde, 17 — was still alive. I am almost certain she would have danced to it as well, but she may not have considered the words or how cautious she should be, especially in a relatively young relationship, which she began in December 2021 with Majekodunmi, who consented to sacrifice her head for money rituals.

Hip-hop performers have emerged as a valuable source of data for analyzing Nigeria’s social problems. They point to the positive, reveal the negative, and foreshadow a bleaker or more promising future. They may also be negative influences, fostering terrible behavior. Hip-hop artists use the themes of their songs to breakdown arcane protocols in human communication and relationships. In other words, music lyrics have probative value in terms of concepts and ideals that may and should be questioned in order to better understand our complex social reality. In this background, Zazoo Zeh tells us a tragic story about Nigeria’s current situation. In this song, Nigeria is described as a country ruled by ‘General Badoo Lee’, whose body language encourages deviant and criminal behaviours. Badoo, who appeared in the Zazoo video dressed in a military uniform, admitted that “many many were wan le o (there are many mad/insane people in Nigeria), unholy, Zeh; Ah, repete, Zeh.” Baddo Lee, Zeh, Ah Babeje (destroy the place), Zeh…Hmm, Zazu Che, Hacker.

This lyric depicts a character being pushed to engage in disruptive behavior in order to babeje (destroy the location). What conduct is more unholy than murdering your girlfriend, whom you had just had sex with, although she was already scheduled to die minutes later? And, like Judas, an insider who kissed Jesus to sell him out, Soliu claimed to be kissing Sofiat in the room, but the kissing had symbolic meaning signifying the time to snuff out Sofiat’s life, which Mustakeem, Sofiat’s ex-boyfriend was the one who carried out the execution. He severed Sofiat’s head while the person who had just had sex with her held her down. Even her attempt to flee was thwarted by the heartless Mustakeem, who was better prepared and exposed in gathering necessary ingredients in the fetish ecosystem of money-making ritual. He claimed to have told his father that he simply wanted to learn the Quran and become a native doctor. After being arrested, they displayed characteristics that demonstrated their hardened nature. When performing evil, Badoo in Zazoo Zeh states, “Run ju pa (unpredictable face expression), zeh. Leju pa (frown), zeh. Ma r’erin (don’t laugh), Kala (don’t care), and zeh. Daju (lack of human feeling), zeh. Wuwa ika (do evil), zeh.” These emotional responses were highlighted in the events leading up to Sofiat’s murder. The four were unpredictable in their movements, failed to laugh, grimaced, and showed no remorse while confessing to the iwa ika they had committed. Indeed, criminologists would argue that criminals are both born and produced.

They perfected their attractive target’s schedule by inviting her around 8:30 p.m., knowing she wouldn’t tell her sister where she was going. The boyfriend (Soliu) provided the room for the operation, her old lover (Mustakeem) carried out the head chopping, and the head was taken to Gafar’s residence to be burned. If there was nothing related with such conduct at Gafar’s home, they would not have selected it as the appropriate place.

The question is: where were their parents/guardians when they planned and carried out this wickedness until 10 p.m. To demonstrate that the usage of humans in money rituals is not a new phenomenon, late juju music star Isaiah Kehinde Dairo (IK Dairo) chronicled the practice in his song Ise Ori Ranmi Ni Mo Nse. The song encouraged people to be proud of their jobs and to avoid becoming greedy to the point of unleashing the beast within. As of then, IK Dairo noticed that there was a progressive decline in the moral environment in Nigeria, remarking that aye o gun gege, o di wokowoko (the world is suffering a twist into deviant behavior) since, according to him, there were buoda olowo ojiji, aunty olowo osan gangan, owo yato sowo…isale oro o legbin (there are men and women with sudden wealth but whose sources of wealth were questionable). According to the juju tale, certain people were using other people’s children for money rituals, creating sadness and shattering the hopes of those dead (win fi omo olomo se’so, won so’le ola d’ahoro, Fiile ooo, awodi jeun epe sanra, Iwa ibaje len wu…eni bajale lo bomo je).

In Nigeria, marketers employ awórò (customer appeal remote control) to attract customers to their shop over others. In this country, there are ‘pastors’ and ‘alfas’ who ‘voodolise’ their operations while presenting themselves as actual men of God under the anointing of the supreme being. Ritual murder is not new; it is evolving, and, as Soliu and his band of killers stated, it was committed because they desired to drive exotic cars and live in luxurious homes. They have been socialized to Nigeria’s oppressive ‘I pass my neighbour attitude’.

Sofiat’s ceremonial murder highlights fundamental problems about our society’s (ir)responsibility. It accuses the family of being weak or shirking its responsibilities to create responsible children for society. Failed parents have formed the Yahoo Parents’ Association to encourage their children to commit fraud and persecute others. It opens up social media as a source of both positive and negative information. This tragic murder highlights Nigeria’s religious institutions’ proclivity for preaching materialism while focusing less on moral renewal.

Aren’t we a Zazoo Republic? Landlords rent their houses to yahoo boys for money; hotels love them because they spend and support their businesses; parents wish to have them as children; and girlfriends or wives encourage their boyfriends/husbands to do what others do in order to escape poverty. Parents attend end-of-year celebrations and giggle while their toddlers dance to Zazoo and other ethically dubious songs. A son in eastern Nigeria recently invited his mother to a hotel with the intention of killing her as part of a ceremony. The mother fought to get out of the room, but not without incurring bloody injuries. In a popular video, a four-year-old child was asked what occupation he wanted to undertake. He stated that Yahoo is the biggest business in town, and he would love to work for Yahoo so he could spend money. Another video shows three boys aged 13 to 15 from shattered homes who apparently moved from Delta State to Edo State to hustle and become Yahoo apprentices. These are the few known. The ones we see would be child’s play if we continue to promote conspicuous spending and degrade the dignity of labor and hard work. We must reform our culture to promote hard labor while investigating, arresting, and punishing overnight millionaires. We must encourage positive values and rid the airwaves of ethically flawed songs.

We cannot live in sin and expect grace to abound. A society with more than half of its population living in poverty would have few people adhering to treasured standards and ideals when they see lavish spending on a regular basis; the majority will devise survival techniques. This explains why Yahoo associates exist at all levels of government, security agencies, the music business, banks, families, religious groups, and neighborhoods. To inspire our youth to believe in Nigeria, we must address poverty and unemployment. We must close the inequality gap and develop evidence-based social welfare programs for the vulnerable. Sofiat is no longer present, yet she continues to demand justice. We must ensure that this case deters others from endangering human life.