In recent times, many young people have joined cults and have become miscreants who are killing, maiming, committing crimes and generally involving themselves in very extreme antisocial behaviour.

The recent killing of 16 students of Kwara State Polytechnic is one of many such ugly incidents which should never have happened if these young people had not been misguided by some unscrupulous elements who paint a beautiful half of a picture and leave them to find out too late that the remaining half is not only sordid but also has the capacity to ruin their lives forever.

That some children join these destructive cults at the tender age of 12 years is not only worrisome but also disturbing because they cite the need for protection and sometimes, financial constraints as reasons for their involvement. Perhaps Government at all levels need to put measures in place to provide visible security in all schools for the purpose of surveillance and prompt intervention, as Government is the statutory parent of all children. To prevent poverty from being a driving force, we urge Higher Institutions to provide jobs and opportunities within the campus, where possible, as done in some other countries, so that helpless children from financially deprived backgrounds will not be enticed to join cults. The Government should also, without delay, do something to improve the well being of the general populace so that parents will be better positioned to fend for their children.

We believe that cultism sometimes springs from bad parental upbringing that is also devoid of moral or religious instruction that will instil the fear of God and respect for fellow man. Some parents are hardly ever around and their children have enough unsupervised time on their hands to experiment with all kinds of friends and even drugs. We admonish parents to see their children as their investments that should be guarded jealously. Even when they are not considered financial investments, there is hardly anyone who will toil to build a name and want the name rubbed in the mud. The associated legal problems that come with being caught in cult activities can be very destabilising and emotionally draining, so, parents should well be warned that all the money they chase might soon be spent paying to fight a lost cause if they are not watching over their children.

Some cultists have mentioned untoward goings on between students and teachers as excuse to join cults. We charge people who are supposed to impart knowledge or assist in any form, but use their positions of authority to intimidate, that they should remember that what goes around comes around. Adults who dangle juicy carrots of a better life after school as enticement into cults should also tell their groups that there is need for hard work and decency in order to go far. Of what use is employment when one lives in constant fear of reprisal attacks and is persistently on the negative side of the law? A cue can be taken from social clubs in schools, whose past members position them to assist new graduates to find their footing without all the wanton destruction of lives and property that accompany cultism.

This Newspaper urges traditional rulers and their councils across the country to see this menace as a fight that they cannot afford to stay out of, because all these activities are happening within the domains of traditional institutions. Cults used to be in the confines of schools but have now spilled into the streets. Traditional institutions should be in the vanguard of the fight against cultism since the culprits, when caught, claim affiliations to unscrupulous herbalists, who they claim embolden them, not for any purpose except to make them invincible and vicious when havoc is being wrecked. Such herbalists are actually misrepresenting various traditional religions and institutions and as such should be sanctioned. Besides, it is not a thing of pride to indigenes when names of their towns are mentioned in connection with negative issues.