• Urge politicians to stop using youths for election

Stakeholders in the South-South region have expressed deep concern about the growing cult-related violence, especially with the SBM intelligence, which revealed that 1,686 people were killed in 909 separate incidents of gang-related violence in Nigeria between January 2020, and March 2025, with the South-South and South-West most affected.

A Professor of Sociology Development at the University of Port Harcourt, Prof. Steven Wordu, linked the menace to the failure of governments to prioritise their responsibilities towards security, enhancing the well-being of individuals and ensuring articulated nation-building.

The don emphasised the need for drastic and comprehensive security sector reform, which, according to him, should look into peculiar security issues in the various regions and address them.

Similarly, a peace and security specialist, Florence Ibok Abasi, said that cultism took a very dangerous dimension when politicians got involved, even as political groups and parties took advantage of the gangs by using them during elections, abandoning them thereafter. According to her, this has consequently exacerbated unemployment and violence.

She said: “Rivers State was one of the highest unemployment states. We have a large number of people who are not constructively engaged. When you talk to young people who are into this, the first thing they’ll say is that they have nothing to do.

“The region is also highly environmentally degraded, and livelihoods are affected. This has also created other challenges like artisanal oil refining and yahoo-yahoo. Most cultists are involved in all these. So, cultism is a multi-faceted phenomenon.”

She also expressed concern about the lack of sincere and intentional efforts to mop up arms, make the gang groups renounce their membership and reintegrate the repentant cultists into the society by genuinely empowering them and strictly following them up until they are fully restored.