A night guard at Ibuowo Estate, Okinni, Egbedore Local Government Area of Osun State, on Saturday, allegedly shot dead a 40-year-old man, Badmus Mohammed.

The guard, Rasaq Moshood, DAILY POST gathered, shot Mohammed, a tenant, who is popularly called Lasgidi dead with his dane gun.

His Landlord, Kazeem Jimoh told DAILY POST that he was at a bar with the deceased till midnight on Friday, before he was called on phone about his death.

According to Kazeem, his tenant was killed at the front of the house, while his door was left open.

“I and Kazeem were at a bar till past 12 when I left him.

“I didn’t sleep at home but I got a call around 1 a.m. that Lasgidi was killed by a guard. When i got home, I saw his door open, while his corpse was outside,” he said.

The Police spokesperson, SP Yemisi Opalola confirmed the incident.

She noted that three night guards have been arrested with their dane guns.

According to her, “one Babatunde Olumide, the Chairman of Ibuowo Estate Okinni reported at dada Estate Divisional Police Hqts., that their night guard, one Moshood Rasaq used his dane gun to shoot one Mohammed Badmus, aged 40 years and he died instantly.

“Suspect has been arrested, gun used has been recovered, while the corpse has been taken to UNIOSUN Teaching Hospital morgue for autopsy.”

Opalola added that the case had been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) for further investigation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday with explosions heard soon after across the country and its foreign minister warning a “full-scale invasion” was underway.

Weeks of intense diplomacy and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia failed to deter Putin, who had massed between 150,000 and 200,000 troops along the borders of Ukraine.

“I have made the decision of a military operation,” Putin said in a surprise television announcement that triggered immediate condemnation from US President Joe Biden and sent global financial markets into turmoil.

Shortly after the announcement, explosions were heard in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and several other cities, according to AFP correspondents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his address to the nation at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 21, 2022. Alexey NIKOLSKY / Sputnik / AFP

Putin called on Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms and justified the operation by claiming the government was overseeing a “genocide” in the east of the country.

The Kremlin had earlier said rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine had asked Moscow for military help against Kyiv.

The extent of Thursday’s attacks was not immediately clear, but Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the worst-case scenario was playing out.

“Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes,” Kuleba tweeted.

“This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”

Biden immediately warned of “consequences” for Russia and that there would be a “catastrophic loss of life and human suffering”.

NATO’s chief condemned Russia’s “reckless and unprovoked attack” on Ukraine.

Putin’s move came after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional appeal late on Wednesday night to Russians not to support a “major war in Europe”.

Speaking Russian, Zelensky said that the people of Russia were being lied to about Ukraine.

Zelensky said he had tried to call Putin but there was “no answer, only silence”, adding that Moscow now had around 200,000 soldiers near Ukraine’s borders.

Earlier on Wednesday the separatist leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk sent separate letters to Putin, asking him to “help them repel Ukraine’s aggression”, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The two letters were published by Russian state media and were both dated February 22.

Their appeals came after Putin recognised their independence and signed friendship treaties with them that include defence deals.

– ‘Moment of peril’ –

Putin had for weeks defied a barrage of international criticism over the crisis, with some Western leaders saying he was no longer rational.

His announcement of the military operation came ahead of a last-ditch summit involving European Union leaders in Brussels planned for Thursday.

The 27-nation bloc had also imposed sanctions on Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu and high-ranking figures including the commanders of Russia’s army, navy and air force, another part of the wave of Western punishment after Putin sought to rewrite Ukraine’s borders.

The United Nations Security Council met late Wednesday for its second emergency session in three days over the crisis, with a personal plea there by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Putin going unheeded.

“President Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine, give peace a chance, too many people have already died,” Guterres said.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that an all-out Russian invasion could displace five million people, triggering a new European refugee crisis.

Before Putin’s announcement, Ukraine had urged its approximately three million citizens living in Russia to leave.

“We are united in believing that the future of European security is being decided right now, here in our home, in Ukraine,” President Zelensky said during a joint media appearance with the visiting leaders of Poland and Lithuania.

Western capitals said Russia had amassed 150,000 troops in combat formations on Ukraine’s borders with Russia, Belarus and Russian-occupied Crimea and on warships in the Black Sea.

Ukraine has around 200,000 military personnel, and could call up to 250,000 reservists.

Moscow’s total forces are much larger — around a million active-duty personnel — and have been modernised and re-armed in recent years.

– High cost of war –

But Ukraine has received advanced anti-tank weapons and some drones from NATO members. More have been promised as the allies try to deter a Russian attack or at least make it costly.

Shelling had intensified in recent days between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists — a Ukrainian soldier was killed on Wednesday, the sixth in four days — and civilians living near the front were fearful.

Dmitry Maksimenko, a 27-year-old coal miner from government-held Krasnogorivka, told AFP that he was shocked when his wife came to tell him that Putin had recognised the two Russian-backed separatist enclaves.

“She said: ‘Have you heard the news?’. How could I have known? There’s no electricity, never mind internet. I don’t know what is going to happen next, but to be honest, I’m afraid,” he said.

In a Russian village around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the border, AFP reporters saw military equipment including rocket launchers, howitzers and fuel tanks mounted on trains stretching for hundreds of metres.

Russia has long demanded that Ukraine be forbidden from ever joining the NATO alliance and that US troops pull out from Eastern Europe.

Speaking to journalists, Putin on Tuesday set out a number of stringent conditions if the West wanted to de-escalate the crisis, saying Ukraine should drop its NATO ambition and become neutral.

Washington Wednesday announced sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which Germany had earlier effectively suspended by halting certification.

Australia, Britain, Japan and the European Union have all also announced sanctions.

As of December 2021, when Habeeb Okikiola, the Zazu crooner collaborated with Olamide Adedeji (Badoo) and Poco Lee to release the trending single ZazuZeh, Sofiat Kehinde, the 17-year-old teenager gruesomely murdered at Oke Aregba community in Abeokuta, Ogun State by organized criminals led by her boyfriend, Soliu Majekodunmi (18 years) and three associates (Mustakeem Balogun (19), GafarLukmon (19), and Waris Oladeinde (17) was still alive. I am almost sure that she would have also danced to it but may not have analysed the lyrics and how watchful she ought to be particularly in a relatively new relationship which she started in December 2021 with Soliu Majekodunmi who agreed to sacrifice her head for money-making ritual. 

Hip-hop musicians have become important source of data for the analysis of social conditions in Nigeria. They signpost the good, unveil the bad and hint of a gloomier/promising future. They may also be negative influence by reinforcing the perpetration of evil. Through the theme of their songs, hip-hop singers deconstruct esoteric codes in human communication and relationships. In other words, music lyrics have probative value in ideas and ideals that can be and should be interrogated to understand the complex social world that we live in. It is in this context that ZazuZeh presents to us a sad tale of Nigeria’s contemporary reality.

In this song, Nigeria is presented as a country being ruled by ‘General Badoo Lee’ whose body language encourages deviant and criminal behaviours. Badoo, who adorned in a military uniform in the Zazoo video acknowledged that ‘many many were wan le o ( there are many mad/insane peoplepresent in Nigeria), unholy, Zeh; Ah, repete, Zeh. Baddo Lee, Zeh, Ah babeje (destroy the place), zeh…Hmm ZazuChe, Hacker.”  This lyric unveils a character being encouraged to unleash unruly behavior in order to babeje (destroy the place). What action is more unholy than to murder your girlfriend who you just had sex with while she was already booked to die minutes after? And like Judas, an insider who kissed Jesus to sell him out, Soliu pretended to be kissing Sofiat in the room, but the kissing had symbolic meaning indicating the time to snuff life out of Sofiat, which Mustakeem, Sofiat’s former boyfriend stepped in to execute. He cut off Sofiat’s head while the one who just had sex with her held her down. Even her struggle to escape was resisted by the callous Mustakeem who was more prepared and exposed in assembling essential materialsin the fetish ecosystem of money-making ritual. He claimed to have told his father he was only interested in learning Quran and become a native doctor. After they were arrested, they exhibited mannerisms which communicated their hardened nature.

In doing evil, Badoo in Zazu says: Run ju pa (unpredictable facial expression), zeh. Leju pa (frown), zeh. Ma r’erin (don’t laugh), zehKala (Don’t care), zeh. Daju (lacking human feeling), zeh. WuwaIka (Do evil), zeh. These emotional expressions were exemplified in the processes leading to the murder of Sofiat. The four were unpredictable in their moves, failed to laugh, frowned and showed no remorse while confessing the iwaika they had done. Indeed, as criminologists would argue, criminals are born and made.  They mastered the routine of their attractive target by inviting her around 8:30 pm knowing that she would not disclose where she was going to her sister. The boyfriend (Soliu) provided the room for the operation, her former boyfriend (Mustakeem) executed the cutting of the head and they took the head to the house of Gafar to burn. If there was nothing associated with such practice at Gafar’s house, they would not have chosen it as the appropriate place. The question is where were their parents/guardians while they planned and executed this evil till 10pm? To show that the use of human being for money-ritual is not a recent phenomenon, Late Juju Icon, Isaiah Kehinde Dairo (IK Dairo) documented the practice in his song, Ise Ori Ranmi Ni Mo Nse.

The song encouraged people to be proud of their job and not to be greedy to the extent of unleashing the monster in them. As at then, IK Dairo realized that there was a gradual descent inthe moral ecosystem in Nigeria, noting that aye o gun gege, o di wokowoko (the world is experiencing a twist into deviant behaviour) because, according to him, there were buodaolowoojiji, aunty olowoosangangan, owoyatosowo…isaleoro o legbin (there are men and women with sudden wealth but whose sources of wealth were questionable). The Juju legend noted that, there were some people who were using other persons’ children for money ritual thereby causing sorrow and dashing the hopes of those killed (won fi omoolomose’so, won so’le ola d’ahoro, Fiileooo,awodi-jeun-epe-sanra, iwai baje le n wu..enibajale lo bomo je).” The use of success enhancers is not new in Nigeria where market men and women compete to outdo one another by making charm of Awórò (customer appeal remote control) to ensure that all those who come to buy products patronize a particular shop at the expense of others.In this country, there are ‘pastors’ and ‘alfas’ who ‘voodolise’ their operations but present themselves as real men of God under the anointing of the supreme being.Ritual murder is not new, it is evolving and just like Soliu and his gang of killers said, it was done because they wanted to ride exotic cars and live in beautiful houses. They have been socialized to Nigeria’s ‘I pass my neigbour attitude’ of oppression. The ritual murder of Sofiat raises fundamental questions about us as a/an (Ir)responsible society. It queries family as weak or shirking in her responsibility to raise responsible children for the society. Failed parents now form yahoo parents’association to encourage their children in fraud and oppress others. It opens up the social media as an avenue of learning both positive and the negative. This unfortunate murder implicates Nigeria’s religious institutions’penchant for preaching materialism and doing less on moral rebirth.

Are we not a Zazu republic? Landlords rent their houses to yahoo-boys for money; hotels love them because they spend and sustain their businesses; parents pray to have them as children while girlfriends or wives put pressure on their boyfriends/husbands to do what others are doing so they can escape poverty. Parents attend end of the year party where their toddlers will be dancing to Zazu and other morally compromising songs and they laugh it off. A son in the eastern part of Nigeria recently invited her mother to a hotel for the purpose of killing her for ritual. The mother battled to jump out of the room but not without suffering bloody injuries. In a trending video, a child of about four years was asked which work does he want to do.He responded that Yahoo is the business in town and he would love to do yahoo to be able to spend dollars. In another video, three boys between 13 and 15 years, from broken homesreportedly migrated from Delta to Edo to hustle and become yahoo apprentices. These are the few known. The ones we see would be a child’s play if we continue toembrace conspicuous consumption and lower dignity of labour andhardwork. We must restructure our society to reward hardwork, query, arrest and punish overnight millionaires.

We must incentivize positive values and clean our airwaves of morally bankrupt songs. We cannot be living in sin and expect grace to abound. A society with more than half of its population living inside poverty will have few people conforming to cherished norms and values when they see lavish spending on a daily basis; majority will innovate survival strategies. This explains why there are yahoo-associates in government at all levels, security agencies, music industry, banks, families, religious institutions and neighbourhoods. We must address poverty and unemployment to give our youths hope to believe in Nigeria. We must bridge inequality gap and design evidence based social welfare schemes for the vulnerable.For now, Sofiatis gone but she cries forjustice. We need to ensure this case deters others from zazuing with human life.

Dr Tade, a sociologist writes via dotad2003@yahoo.com.