Cybercrime and Ritualism: the Menace of “Yahoo Boys†and the Demonization of Traditional Igbo Religion and Society

Abstract

In Nigerian context, “Yahoo†means cybercrime committed by obtaining money on false pretense through the internet. Today, the trend is that these swindlers have switched over to the use of rituals in traditional African way in order to make the potency of their evil acts to work effectively, thereby implicating Traditional Religion as satanic. This paper x-rays the subsisting tendency by some of the youths of nowadays, particularly among the Igbo of Nigeria, to manipulate every spiritual force within the Traditional African cosmological field of communication to aid them in making quick money. They exploit the polar powers that reside in Ekwensu, a spirit being in Igbo belief system that corresponds to Christendom’s Satan or Devil, while ignoring the positive/punitive role accorded to this being in Traditional Religion. For the Igbo, Ekwensu represents evil spiritual elements that function as agents of social control. The deployment of demonic forces by “Yahoo Boys†to rip off people should not be misinterpreted as traditional acts of Ekwensu. On the contrary, this paper declares that Ekwensu, the satanic persona within the Igbo realm of cosmological communication, is fundamentally conceptualized as such based on his social control roles. The paper goes further to support the notion of Ekwensu as Satan in terms of his forms, status, and roles in the society, conceptualizing Ekwensu, in direct opposition to the Supreme God, as the main malevolent spiritual agent in Igbo cosmology with defined roles. Ekwensu, not Traditional Religion, is the sole author of all negative actions of the Yahoo boys.