By Balarabe Oshiafi

Lately the media landscape is really having a busy time trying to grapple with “Yahoo, Yahoo” and “Yahoo Plus” Stories with which it is being inundated.
Let me quickly do some clarifications.”Yahoo Yahoo” findings reveal, is an illegitimate, internet based practice of obtaining money from an unsuspecting victim under the guise of offering some social or economic returns. it is not known to involve human sacrifice.
Yahoo Plus, this Writer learnt, is the one that must need Human blood if the aim of swindling money out of a victim must be realised. It is this Yahoo Plus the practice of which has assumed a dangerous dimension among our teenagers and youths that has engendered this write-up.
incidents of Young boys tricking their female friends to hotels and other hide outs and butchering them for rituals is now as rampant in the south as banditry is prevalent in the north and around Nigeria.
Young Men eating bread and excreta all in the name of making it is also now a regular occurrence.
Yahoo Plus money have become phenomenal. Yahoo Yahoo, Yahoo Plus, Kidnappers and Bandits seem to be in some kind of competition with one group trying to out smart the other, and decimating our socio-cultural lives in the process. What with some Mothers now sounding off about their Sons having built houses for them with Yahoo Yahoo money.
How did we get here?
I read somewhere that someone was blaming the Yahoo Plus phenomenon on the emerging Film industry in Nigeria otherwise called Nollywood. That is rather distressing and uncharitable. I hold an informed standpoint that themes of most Nollywood Movies that bear ritual scenes often get resolved with nemesis catching up with the evil doer(s).
Movies throughout the World are rated and no one forces another to watch what he or she does not like to watch. I once wrote a story entitled, ” Nollywood:A waiting Gold mine”. It is still it and has achieved global reckoning. That Sub-Sector only needs to be given a pride of place and not to be disparaged for any reason whatsoever.
The cause of moral decadence in the Society is the primitive accumulation of riches by the bulwark of the hegemonic non-tribal minority which decides who goes into a political Office and which has been holding the Citizenry to ransom over the years. Family values and legitimate skills acquisition for personal development have been made to look unattractive to majority of the Youths. Nowadays, you hear comments like, “Even if I graduate, where is the job…”
As condemnable as incidences of , Kidnapping, Banditry, Yahoo Yahoo, Armed Robbery and Yahoo Plus are, they are continuing at an alarming rate because of endemic mismanagement of our common patrimony. Some of these Leaders of tomorrow have become frustrated and have become obedient to the first law of nature- survival.
What should we do? Government needs to urgently divest power and make economic deregulation automatic. Government needs to decongest the political space and take capacity building and economic empowerment to the rural areas.
As 2023, approaches, an opportunity to make the the political office an office of service rather than aggrandizement of the office occupier beckons. We need to make the office of the President and Governor less attractive such that only he who is ready to serve the people should aspire to get in there.
It is feasible. Yes it is.