An expose on the dangerous, deadly world of Nigerian campus confraternities
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, noted Earl Simmons (a.k.a DMX), American artiste, in a 2000 box office hit, Romeo Must Die. The artiste was preaching the futility of unnecessary gang violence to rival gangsters before a gunfight in his club. You could be forgiven for thinking Simmons had Nigeria in mind when he made the statement. As you read, violence through the gun barrel has escalated, precipitated by regional and ethnic conflicts, campus cult violence and political disorder. OLATUNJI OLOLADE, Assistant Editor, reports the situation and the effects on the society as ECOWAS moves to stem the proliferation of arms in the West African region.
SOMETIME in the twilight of 2001, Dare Alayinde became the bullies’ favourite. At 27, he was in his second year in the university and he was being picked upon by gangsters otherwise known as secret cult boys. That had to be frustrating because he was also a cult boy.
Alayinde belonged to the Supreme Eiye Confraternity (SEC). In fact, he joined in order to guarantee his freedom and stop paying ‘security dues’ to the ruling confraternity on campus, like his rivals did. Alayinde was a photographer with a five-month old child and Ireti, his wife, who attended the same school with him.
After joining SEC, Alayinde stopped paying ‘security due’ like his rival photographers but then he was forced to pay a different kind of due. He had to pay the N2, 000 annual due imposed upon every member of his cult group. Although he joined SEC to avoid paying the N5, 000 security due collected from every photographer working on his school’s ‘motion ground’ (photo avenue), Alayinde had to contend with all manners of demand and financial levies which made being a ‘strong man’ (cultist) not quite attractive as it seemed from a distance.
“He was always complaining that he wasn’t enjoying the benefits of joining the cult…One day he came home badly bruised and without the zoom lens to his camera. He said they had seized it because he refused to pay his annual cult dues. I told him to take heart that God would provide him money to get a new one but he said that he didn’t need a new one. He claimed God won’t come to his aid because God expected him to liberate himself,” said Ireti.
Hence at the advice of a friend, he purchased a 9mm semi-automatic pistol assuring his wife that it would garner him the respect he deserved. Expectedly, he stopped paying his dues. He got the respect he sought and ascended the rank of his cult gang.
“Suddenly, he (Alayinde) became erratic and threatened to ‘light’ (shoot) people up at the slightest provocation. He tendered and polished his gun every night calling it his baby. He told me he was being considered for office (executive post) and when my plea that he backed out fell on deaf ears, I decided to leave him,” said Ireti.
But just before she did so, a fracas broke out between her husband’s group and the Buccaneers, a rival cult; in the melee, Alayinde was shot and butchered in a reprisal attack. Although he was able to kill two of his assailants, his “baby” couldn’t save him.
“He made me a widow at the age of 21. I warned him against joining the cult but he refused to listen to me. He said once he becomes an officer, life will become rosy for us. He said he would be placed on a monthly salary that would augment his income from his photography business. I feared he would die before his time and he did,” said Ireti with a painful sigh.
More pathetic was the case of Damilola Olaniyan Ibraheem a.k.a Damoche; the fast rising hip hop artiste and undergraduate of Lagos State University (LASU) was brutally hacked down in March by rival confraternity, Black Axe members. Damoche, a 400 level Banking and Finance undergraduate and suspected SEC member was shot twice in the head and on the left hand with what appeared to be a high caliber weapon. He lay dead for several hours before policemen arrived to take his body away in a pick-up van. Even though the police have been unable to resolve his murder, no fewer than three students have been killed in reprisal attacks over the death of the late artiste.