By Irene Eshiemokha
I was roughly 10 years old when I had my first encounter with cult recruitment as a secondary school student in Festac Town, Lagos. The approach appeared harmless at first. Older students began joking with me and making deliberate efforts to build proximity. Then came drugs, parties, pornography, and older girls – followed by the explicit invitation to join.
When I refused, they asked again. When I refused a second time, the intimidation began. I had no clear avenue for reporting and no understanding of what might follow, so I kept quiet and survived. Years later, after writing about the rise of cultism, the death threats resurfaced. That history makes this personal, but my experience is merely a fragment of a national horror.
Let us strip away the polite euphemisms. We must call cultism and counterfeiting what they truly are: bloodthirsty, organized mass murder.
While campus confraternities may have originated as intellectual societies, they have devolved into sadistic criminal syndicates. According to data from SBM Intelligence, no fewer than 1,686 Nigerians were slaughtered in over 900 cult-related clashes between 2020 and 2025. In Rivers, Lagos, Edo, Delta, and Osun, rival death squads – Black Axe, Eiye, Vikings, Icelanders, and Jurist – battle openly in broad daylight with battle-axes, cutlasses, and pump-action shotguns.
In July 2026 alone, police in Lagos arrested 135 suspected cultists and recovered 26 firearms ahead of the notorious ‘7/7’ anniversary. In Edo State, a feud between Aiye and Jurist cultists at Auchi Polytechnic left seven young people hacked to death in one week. In Delta State, 23-year-old cultists celebrated the murder of a 25-year-old man at Jesse Main Market on video. In Osogbo, Osun State, tactical squads had to flood the streets after cultists executed youths.
Yet the institutional response is intermittent raids, theatrical press briefings, and silence. Cult leaders and their political sponsors – who arm these men as electoral enforcement squads – walk free. When a teenager is hunted for saying ‘no’ to recruitment, it is not peer pressure; it is violent terrorism.
If cult violence is visible slaughter, Nigeria’s counterfeit market is an unseen, industrial-scale holocaust. It is not about fake designer bags; it is the deliberate distribution of lethal poison as medicine, food, and building materials.
Consider the revelation by the Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye. Post-marketing surveillance at the Kano Coordinated Wholesale Centre uncovered pediatric medicines containing ZERO active content. As Prof. Adeyeye lamented: “How many children have died? The child cannot complain; he will just be sleepy and sleepy and pass off.”
How many thousands of Nigerian children have been quietly murdered in their cribs by merchants who distributed empty syrups? Because Nigeria lacks accurate mortality registration, we will never know the true body count. But every child who died because their medicine contained zero active ingredients was murdered.
In nationwide raids targeting Open Drug Markets in Onitsha Bridge Head, Idumota in Lagos, and Aba, NAFDAC seized over 130 40-foot truckloads of fake, banned, expired, and revalidated drugs worth over N1.5 Trillion. In Osisioma, near Aba, inspectors discovered a building filled floor-to-ceiling with expired pharmaceuticals undergoing illegal revalidation. In February 2026, NAFDAC intercepted over 10 million doses of fake malaria drugs worth N3 Billion hidden inside a spare parts warehouse at the Lagos Trade Fair Market.
*Slaps on the Wrist for Mass Killers*
Here lies the most sickening aspect: our legal framework treats mass murderers in suits with gentle gloves.
Consider the official enforcement update released by NAFDAC in 2025 following raids in Idumota, Onitsha, and Aba. After finding warehouses stocking banned and falsified narcotics, what were the consequences? Administrative charges were set at N5 Million for selling unregistered products – and then, after ‘much pleading’ by the sellers, reduced to a laughable N200,000! For violating public health regulations, charges of N2 Million were reduced to N500,000!
A merchant who makes hundreds of millions distributing fake malaria injections pays N200,000 and walks away. That is not law enforcement; it is a license to kill.
Examine the moral hypocrisy: Across several states, kidnapping and armed robbery carry the death penalty. If a kidnapper is sentenced to death by hanging, why does an importer who imports 10 million doses of fake malaria medication walk out with a fine of a few hundred thousand Naira or a suspended sentence? The merchant who stocks fake Artemetrin, the importer who clones labels onto fire-prone cables (such as the N30 million counterfeit cable stash seized by SON in Ekiti State), and the cultist who pulls a trigger share the same mindset: ‘Your life is worth less than my profit.’
This crisis persists because institutionalized apathy has paralyzed our nation. Every fake drug passes through complicit hands – importers, clearing agents, corrupt customs officers, market union leaders, warehouse landlords. Every cult group operates with the tacit protection of local elders and politicians.
When citizens protect violent relatives and judges grant administrative bail to syndicate kingpins, silence becomes active murder.
We must enact uncompromising reforms:
Capital Punishment for Counterfeiters: The National Assembly must amend the NAFDAC and SON Acts to classify deliberate manufacture or distribution of falsified medicines, toxic food, and substandard building materials as constructive mass murder, punishable by mandatory life imprisonment or death.
Prohibition of Plea Bargains: No agency or court should have power to reduce fines for corporate counterfeiters. Administrative fines of N200,000 for multi-billion Naira blood crimes are an insult.
Total Asset Forfeiture: Every warehouse, market stall, and factory used for counterfeit products or cult armories must be permanently confiscated or demolished.
Prosecuting Political Sponsors of Cultism: Law enforcement must go beyond foot soldiers and prosecute politicians, community leaders, and businessmen who fund and shield cult networks.
Nigeria cannot survive as a civilized society if we treat human life as cheap and negotiable. A country where a child dies because her malaria drug was filled with chalk, while the merchant pays a small fine and buys a luxury car, is on the brink of moral collapse.
A Nigerian life is a human life. It possesses intrinsic, sacred value that cannot be traded for profit, political ambition, or institutional convenience.
Eshiemokha writes via [email protected]
