THE ROLE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN COMBATING CULTISM IN THE NIGERIAN INSTITUTIONS
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Cultism is undeniably one of the social vices setting the hand of the developmental clock of Nigeria backwards. The unabated atrocities of secret cults in the Nigerian educational institutions and even in the wider Nigerian society continue to take tolls on the lives of young and old Nigerians. Many young people, politicians, academics and industrialists have been hacked down in their prime by the cultists. It could be in the execution of a contract to assassinate and waste the life of their mentor’s real or imagined often political enemy. Acting as hirelings, the cultists get their target in his residence or office or track him down on the way. In most cases, the murderers ‘escape,’ not tracked down because they are serving the powers that be. They do not face the wrath of the law because the event is linked to a political godfather, a sacred cow. The dismayed Enugu State Development Association (ESDA) feared in 2005 that the failure of the government security apparatus to arrest and prosecute any suspects in the numerous incidences of political murder in Enugu State showed that the government had a hand in the crimes and made speaking out very risky. More often than not, however, it is in a clash between two cult groups, the one trying to demonstrate its stronger devilish powers over the other. The cultists strike in one Nigerian educational institution today and a reprisal occurs the next day in another institution, claiming lives in both cases. Sometimes, a chain of reactions is sparked off in many other institutions of higher learning. This depicts their synergy and network of existence and activities in a country already ravaged by underdevelopment, poverty and misery (Onoh, 2006). Widespread corruption in high places and endemic poverty in the society are precursors of cultism in the Nigerian educational institutions. Due to poor agricultural planning, leadership ineffectiveness and mismanagement, millions of Nigerians, many of them children, are starving to death. Only about 2% of Nigerians, many of them among the present and former ruling classes, control over 60% of the nation’s financial assets, while over 70% of the Nigerian population live below the poverty line (Encarta, 2005e and Umar, 2007). The cultists, mostly the youth, are merely responding to the societal contradictions in national socio-economic development.
Nigeria, with the natural potentials to be among the richest countries in the world, a paradise on earth for all, is variously rated between the 13th and 21st poorest country and 1st or 2nd most corrupt nation in the whole wide world (Eneh, 1985 and Eneh, 2006). Successive military and civilian governments have paid lip-service to the eradication of secret cults in Nigerian schools. Rather than thin out, these secret societies appear to grow by leaps and bounds, and to spread fast from the tertiary institutions of learning into the secondary and primary schools (The Guardian on Sunday, 2000 and Eneh, 2006). Only iron political will can stamp cultism out of the