Last month, a man was reported to have killed his own brother in Oyo State after a dream. The incident is a warning that some individuals in society still treat superstition as a substitute for reason. It is time for the government, religious and community leaders to act urgently to address this danger before more minds tip over.
The alleged assailant, Lateef Suleiman, 43, woke up one morning convinced that his elder brother, Mustapha Amidu, had shot him in a dream the previous night. Without seeking counsel or weighing his planned action, he picked up a heavy rock, walked to where Amidu sat, and struck him on the head. Amidu, 52, was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. Suleiman has since been arrested.
Records from across the country show that the Oyo tragedy is not without precedent. Nigerians appear to be sitting on a keg of gunpowder fuelled by superstition, where heightened emotions can quickly erupt into violence.
In February 2026, in the Ofeh community in Rivers State, a man took a cutlass to his relative, accusing him of witchcraft and holding him responsible for his own failure to progress in life. The suspect had never attended secondary school. In Omuo Ekiti in 2025, a group of youths killed a 70-year-old woman named Rebecca on account of a dream that a little girl had reported. In Kano, five men were sentenced to death for beating a 67-year-old woman to death after one of them claimed his ailing wife had dreamt that she was being chased by the deceased with a knife.
These incidents follow a familiar pattern. An individual perceives a misfortune, such as illness, poverty, death, or failure to make progress. Rather than seeking fair-minded and verifiable explanations, the afflicted falls back on a jaundiced worldview in which suffering is always thought to be caused by a human agent. This agent is usually considered malevolent and must be confronted. Over time, suspicion shifts into accusation. Left unchallenged, accusations take on the garb of certainty. At this point, the individual who has been taught that he is under spiritual attack resorts to violence.
Every Nigerian has the right to believe whatever he or she wishes because no law governs the conscience. Section 38(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) states: “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…” Conscience, however, governs action, and happily, actions are subject to the law. When a dream is appropriated as evidence or a spiritual suspicion is deployed as a death sentence, the effect is no longer the product of personal belief but a punishable crime. No faith tradition sanctions the killing of a human being based on a nightmare. That this even needs to be stated shows how dangerously the line between belief and reality has been blurred for some Nigerians.
The government bears the most direct responsibility and must confront this despicable display of ignorance with a rigorous, sustained campaign in local languages delivered to rural communities. While culture remains a strong influence on societal conduct, the Oyo incident indicates that the nation’s educational authorities have achieved little in waging a deliberate ideological reorientation against superstition.
The religious community is not entirely absolved from the crisis. Any attempt to discuss superstition-driven killing in Nigeria without acknowledging the role that a significant portion of the country’s clergy has played amounts to dishonesty. When a cleric tells his congregation that a witch causes their poverty, that the witch lives among them, and that deliverance requires their money and his ‘special’ supplications, he is not pointing souls towards redemption. Such so-called servants of God build a worldview in which the next Lateef Suleiman already knows who to blame before he has even had the dream.
The painful irony is that while the preachers smile to the bank, the suspicious and the suspected are pushed into episodes of violence and social unease. Religious leaders of genuine conscience still exist across the country. It is not enough that they avoid this kind of doctrine on their platforms. They must dismantle it; stand before their congregations and say, repeatedly, that witchcraft does not exist as a physical force. No dream signifies evidence of another person’s guilt, and taking an innocent life over a spiritual accusation is not deliverance but murder.
Traditional rulers and community leaders must also change their modus operandi. In many communities, witchcraft accusations are still considered matters for internal resolution; affairs to be mediated by the elders rather than reported to the police. Some traditional rulers may have discouraged law enforcement from intervening in such cases, offering the cover of custom to what is, in plain terms, murder. No custom licenses killing, and no tradition is above the law. When community leaders obstruct justice in a witchcraft-related violence or lend the authority of their office to legitimise accusations, they become accomplices rather than noble custodians of culture.
It is not enough for the Oyo State police to investigate and prosecute the case. It is not enough for a court to convict either. The justice executed must be widely communicated so that societies where such potential killers reside understand the power of the law to interpret the anomaly and punish offenders. The publicised Kano case, in which five men were sentenced to death, and more such judicial interventions will help to prompt national reflection.
There has been a growing global effort to confront the history of witch-hunts and their modern consequences. On International Women’s Day in 2022, Scotland’s then First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, issued a formal apology for the persecution of thousands of people accused under the country’s witchcraft laws between the 16th and 18th centuries. In the United States, lawmakers in Connecticut have moved to formally exonerate those executed during the colony’s 17th-century witch trials, reflecting a broader push to acknowledge historical injustices. Earlier, in July 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted its first resolution specifically aimed at eliminating harmful practices linked to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks.
Mustapha Amidu is dead. It should be the last. As the AI revolution dawns on humanity, Nigeria cannot afford to tread medieval paths that have profited no one or sink any further into worldviews in which citizens hunt
down their fellows on bizarre allegations.
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