The beauty and lure of Cultism in Nigeria -My personal experience

In solemn humility, I would first offer a dedication of this piece to my God, JEHOVAH Almighty Father, for looking favourable on my endeavour and, to my liberator JESUS CHRIST for embarking on the true Aliyah for me. Secondly, this article is in honour of my best friend, melancholy, after the death of Isioma Egbunna.Bon nuit. Also to my brother, solitude, after the demise of Roland. Buon Notte. And to them who lost their lives to cultism in Nigerian universities, I say Adieu to you all. Goodnight.

Many books, novel, essay, article and even poems have been written on the subject of cultism. Controversies rage on the pages of newspapers, on the tube, on radio and in legislative chambers across the land on this same vexed issue of cultism – campus cultism. Many scholars have commented on this topic but, no single authority on cultism – the cultist themselves, – have been asked or given the forum to shed light on the addictive nature of this esoteric phenomena that perpetuates its existence and seemingly makes it immortal.

The clergy have spoken about it and have even proffered panacea. The pyrate confraternity aka seadogs, the pioneer confraternity, which is suppose to know better on the intricacies, does an absurd turnaround by going on the defensive claiming not to be a campus confraternity, while accepting that they are the progenitor! But we all know that they, the pyrates, still have active campus decks in the universities(ie futo, uniport, unn) etc. Though this is not the crux of my work, I still believe it’s a salient point for future dialectical disputation.

I am a cultist. I use this term because I write from the point of view of a cultist though repented. I belong to a confraternity which is arguably the most violent campus cult in Nigeria today. I had also held for two years the highest campus office of this cult – the national numero uno on campuses, – and so I believe myself to be a competent authority on this issue of campus cult and on the perpetuation of cultism in our campus. Let me state categorically that every slimy creature in the swamp of society has relatives in the campus swamp because the cults reflects the society.
After a potential cultist had embarked on the esoteric escapade of confraternal kindergarten, his life then adopts the sophisticated personality of discretion. He becomes adept at circumventing a quagmire of school rules, take up defiant stance against norm and constituted authorities, and then glory’s in his first taste of boisterous freedom. He becomes moonstruck and deliriously happy. A delusion of magnified grandeur.

Looking back today, I understand that the beauty of cultism is in actuality a magnetic and apprehensive curiosity that propelled us to indulge in horseplay’s that bordered on the delinquent. The esoteric nature of cultism is in itself an opium of hallucinatory powers that stimulated our anarchist zeal. Come to think of it, it wasn’t as if the pioneers of the various confraternities were lawless. Far from it, they were actually law abiding, if these laws didn’t conflict with their own laws. They were also enthusiastic students but with radical philosophies against convention which they pursued pragmatically.

Their fundamentalism stemmed from the root that they in their elitist snobbery despised all the cursed ideologies which constituted authorities espoused. They saw all conventionalist as satanists with sinister and horrendously grotesque laws which they forced down the throat of the masses in a suppressive dispensation of birth-to-death privation.
They saw things in the perspective that they, the new academic elites, were mandated by their education not to suffer such inhumanity to perpetually be the lot of their downtrodden uneducated brothers and sisters. So the cultist formed themselves into ad hoc Marxists. At first, all these took place in a silent, ethereal pace without histrionics until the situation deteriorated with the proliferation of membership.
At this stage of our metamorphosis, the cults were now the tool of Lilly white plaid pants pious Mohammedan and Jesus bigots militarician and politicians and, docile cultist, now armed, took on the awesome personality of marauders with the killer instinct of a doomed predator. We danced into an albatross, into the murky waters of death and sleepless nights.

Now everything in the business of cultism run voraciously on nerves and anxiety as the dandy little maneuvers of feisty military politicians has degeneratey monocled their veneer of clandestine decoy. The progenitors now take umbrage that the cults exhibits an annihilatory obsession for adventurously devastating savagery. The politicians are in a rage now as they initiate perfunctory crackdowns on their products. These crack downs are palatable chastisement ostensibly to soothe a dilapidated populace into an effusion of ecstatic out – break of elegant praise and joy at their proficiency in fighting their creation.
I know for sure that to our progenitors, it is still a mystery for them to determine when this sweet flight of ecstasy segued into a horrifying awareness as they, in their desperation, seek and searched for leverages to anchor for succour.

If government and society are true in their quest to annihilate the menace of cultism in our campuses, then they should be a shift of approach from their present policy of weakly improvised contingency method to a more pragmatic and articulated modus operandi. Presently the disheveled and frantic strikes of the government and society cannot march the awesome splendour which cultism holds to the potential cultist. Repentant cultists tend to become maudlin after a re-exposure to the UN-invigorating existence of life outside cultism – this is the product of a mediocre society – which resurrects in them a consummate emotional starvation for the intricacies of confra-life which is now their elixir.

Sometimes the disdain in which government and, in extension, society hold cultist – repentant or not – pushes them further into the quagmire. That a man belongs to a cult doesn’t make him inhuman. It doesn’t mean he cannot fall in love and embark on romantic escapades. It doesn’t mean he cannot show compassion even to perceived enemies. Though cultist are now seen as a cauldron of angry mediocre youths, the cults still harbours smoldering geniuses of unmeasurable magnitude whom if well directed and cultivated will propel society, through their in-puts, to greater height.

Now an ethical question of severe gravity arise: ‘Can a cultist be truly repentant, and would he in all sincerity tenaciously battle and deal debilitating blows to his erstwhile constituency? The answer is yes. If given the incentive to quit and be actively employed in a clandestine security out-fit mandated to administer lasting solution to these sleazy organizations, the cultist will be the panacea to cultism.
Confraternity in itself is not a horrendous organization. The horror is the jihadist characteristic which they exhibit. If the confraternities are given the opportunity to become registered and legal, thereby being accountable to their actions, they will all metamorphose into a likeness of the non-violent pyrate confraternity which operates in the manner confraternities function in western universities.

Until such measures are activated, we should know in all sincerity that the cults have come to stay because they have been hypnotized by the larger society into moisting their short eternity in a perpetual desecration of UN-profaned youths.
And so until then, I say Adieu to them who are about to die. You are welcomed.

08056349025