By Oluwadamilare Omotosho
Recently, a gory video emerged in the social media showing a crowd of angry residents parading a young man and lady stripped naked and forced to carry the dead bodies of two men they were alleged to have killed for money rituals.
The voice of the man who made the video claimed that the incident happened at Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State, adding that the man and the lady were caught as they were taking the slain men to the shrine of a native doctor.
He also left a note that reads: “Yahoo man and woman killed two persons at Ihiala in Anambra State…please, we should not relent in advising our children from engaging in Yahoo and making friends with Yahoo boys and girls.”
Indeed, this has become the lot of most Nigerian youths today.
In the quest for material acquisitions and to live extravagant lives, many misguided youths are now adopting dubious and diabolical means to make money. For them, the mantra is to make it big by whatever means, mostly through rituals.
This is why Yahoo, a catchword for inordinate ways of making money, has now become common in the country, where young boys and girls who are supposed to be in school are now seen riding expensive and exotic flashy cars, wearing expensive clothes and many others getting into hard drugs.
So many have upgraded into using other things, saying that the normal “Yahoo” is no longer paying them well, making them to now upgrade to “Yahoo Plus” – both of which denigrate the brand name of a popular and global Internet messaging App. Definitely, the crooked youths have adopted this respected Internet messaging brand name to depict their inordinate behaviour.
These devil-driven young men and women can be easily identified by the physical marks they made on their wrists and some other parts of their body. Many wear rings, calling it fashion, while others go as far as painting their nails with some special paints given to them by the herbalists who prepare the so-called portions, charms and other items they need to make money through diabolic means.
In a chat with Sunday Sun, a Yahoo boy, simply identified as John revealed why he got into the condemnable act.
Hear him: “I went into Yahoo because my friends are into it and with the way they lived their life, it made me think a lot and decided to try it out. At first it was hard to make money from it. This led me to go further, the next level, which is Yahoo Plus.”
How did that exactly happen, John was prodded and he said: “A friend of mine took me to an Alfa to do some prayers and to check if I will be able to go into Yahoo Plus. Then the Alfa told me to do some things and then come back after three days. He gave me a hand bead to wear and promised me that I will cash out after some weeks. I did as the Alfa told me.”
So what happened thereafter, he was asked? With a twinkle in his eyes, he said: “Yes, I made some money and it was a huge amount of money. So, I went back to the Alfa to thank him by giving him some money and also to renew my bead for more money. Like that, I kept making more money from my client.
“I also used the money to take care of my family, send my siblings to school and support my parents. I even went back to school myself.”
John conceded that since water began to run from his Yahoo tap, he has had no regrets at all, insisting: “If I had not done what I did, I would still be struggling by now, and probably be on the streets. I thank God.”
As he thanked God for a “successful” Yahoo endeavour, many believe that it is the seeming “success” of Yahoo, openly displayed by those who engaged in it, is the powerful force attracting thousands of young people into it.
Take the case of another young man, Gabriel, who has been into Yahoo Plus for some time.
He told Sunday Sun, how he got into it: “When I got admission into the university, as a fresher I stayed off campus. The house I lived in had many other students as occupants who were the ‘Big Boys’, who spent money like water. As time went on I began to feel intimidated by these students who had flashy cars, wore expensive clothes, and brought girls to their rooms almost everyday. I always wondered why and what they were doing to earn the money they lavished on the girls. After about one month, I began to move with them, go to parties with them, and eventually started Yahoo as well. They taught me how it’s done, and I started making money.
“But it is not everything that lasts forever. The Yahoo methods I was using were not bringing in money like that again. One day, I needed money, so I begged one of my Yahoo friends to help me out. That was also when he asked if I was ready to make more money. Naturally, I said yes. He told me the story of how he became a wealthy guy.
“On a Sunday morning he took me to the house of one Baba, who told me some things about my future. He told me about the girl I liked in school, instructing me to stay away from her if I wanted to make any money. I promised to stay away from her and agreed to go further with the arrangement, whereby he gave me a soap to bathe with. I started seeing changes after using the soap to bathe, then I started making money. I bought my first car during my second semester, and rented a personal apartment for myself.
“I was living the life I wished for. I stopped going to class, I would go when I felt like, and then pay lecturers to sort my exams and test scores. That’s how my educational life was from 100 level. I went to clubs, to party with my friends, had different girls as I wanted and spent money lavishly.
“At a point though, Baba’s charm stopped working, and he wanted me to do more extreme things for money. That’s when I realized I couldn’t continue. I remembered what my parents sent me to school for, and I had to stop.”
In another chat with a group of friends who are all engaged in Yahoo, they revealed what made them to go into Yahoo Plus and the benefits they have been getting from it.
Sharing his story, one of them said: “I started Yahoo when I was in secondary school. My friends and I were classmates from school back then and we were thinking of what to do after school because the country was not favouring anyone again, things were hard then. We began with the common Yahoo, which we now know as online scam, whereby we use fake numbers to call people to collect personal information from them to help us make money. With the little we could get, we would buy an iPhone just to show off and be seen as big boys then.
“After our secondary school, making money from the normal Yahoo became hard, people already knew what we were doing and they were not paying us again. Some of us, including me, went to look for work. I started working to earn money, but it was not enough. I knew of this Yahoo Plus, but I had no interest then, but it was looking like it was the only way out to enjoy like others.
“I eventually went into Yahoo Plus with my friend. We knew of a young guy who was into Yahoo Plus. He lived in the same area as my friend and I. We usually talked to him whenever we saw him, so we asked him for an update on Yahoo. At first, he did not want to tell us anything about it, but he eventually shared the update with us. He didn’t tell us anything in detail, but assured us that he would help us. He took both of us to a shrine in Ogun State, where he said he did his own Yahoo Plus ritual. The shrine was inside a house and we saw the Baba that day. He asked us some questions, looked into our palms and gave us some instructions. We bought a soap, black soap, which he told us to bathe around 1:00 a.m every night for seven days and he also gave us a ring to wear when chatting with our client. After that we started cashing out and we made a lot of money. We usually go every month to renew our ring.”
When asked what they used the money to do, he said: “We began to stay in hotels where we would lodge for months because of privacy, so we could do as instructed by the herbalist. We began to take hard drugs to keep us awake at night. We would go to clubs most times to party and spend our money and also carry girls, buy clothes to look good and at times we would change our phones also to attract girls.”
Another guy named Tunde narrated the story of how he and his friends got themselves into Yahoo Plus: “We all started with the common online scam before one of us went into Yahoo Plus and began to make more money. When we asked him how he was making more money than us, he said that he was not sure if we would be able to go through the path. However, we insisted that he tells us.
“He told us that he met with a pastor, who prayed for him for some days, and instructed that any money he made from yahoo, he should use it to help the poor, and by that he would make more money. It was not a big deal the way he said it so we agreed to do as he said. Then he took us to the pastor, and he did the same thing for us.
“However, after some months we were not making money like before, so we decided to go back to the pastor. When we got there, the pastor asked us if we had girlfriends, to which we replied, yes. He said our problem was solved, if we could use our girlfriends. He instructed us to have sex with our girlfriends and bring back the condom we used in having sex with them. We did as the pastor said and we were making money from our clients again, but the pastor also said we should break up with them and every week we should have sex with different sets of girls to make more money. We used the money to carry girls to clubs, host parties and also furnish the apartment we lived in. This was how we went with our Yahoo Plus, up till now we are still making money together as friends.”
Speaking with another group of friends who decided to go into Yahoo Plus, one of them explained: “The situation of my family was not okay, things had not been going well. My other guy, his father, was embarrassed because he could not pay his debt, so we all made up our minds to go into it. We went to a place in Ijebu Ode in Ogun State to see an herbalist. When we got there the herbalist welcomed us and said he knew why we were there before we could say anything. We were all surprised, but still happy at the same time, he told us not to worry about anything and assured us that he would help us. He did some incantations and gave each of us something to eat and drink, instructing us to go. But before we left, he said there were some sacrifices he needed to make for us.
“After everything, we went back home and we started cashing out steadily, we started enjoying our lives and we could do anything with the money we made from scamming. We all rented our own apartments where we stayed. After some months, we invited the herbalist over for sacrifice, and he told us what to do next. He asked us to buy two chickens, each for the sacrifice and some kolanuts, the rest he would bring over when he is coming, and we did as he said. We killed the chicken and used the blood to bathe, saying some incantations as directed by the herbalist. We did this during the night.
“He told us to renew it every two months and we all agreed. This is what we have been doing since we started. We made lots of money and we did this to feed and support our family. I don’t think we can back down at this point.”
