There are towns that bear scars of evil, and there are others that suffer for crimes they didn’t commit—ghost towns dragged into infamy not by their own sins, but by the ignorance of those telling their stories.

Then, there are stories that are more dangerous than the sins they carry—not because of their content, but because of how they are told, how they are framed, how they are named.

The recent media story surrounding the ritual killings in Ezeagu Local Council of Enugu State is a case study in all three tragedies. It involved a man called “Ichie Million”—a native doctor alleged to have run a shrine where pregnant women and children were buried alive, slaughtered for money rituals, and buried in shallow graves like abandoned secrets. The stories had horror. The stories had blood. The stories had spiritual darkness. But they didn’t have accuracy. Not even in something as basic as naming the place where it all happened.

Many news headlines echoed the same name: Umuma Ndiagu. Social media feeds repeated it. Some went further to confuse and conflate it with Umana Nidiagu. And I, sitting with ears tuned and roots deep in that soil, shook my head. Umuma Ndiagu does not exist. It is a cartographic fiction—an editorial ghost conjured up by reporters too lazy to confirm, too hurried to verify, too indifferent to consequence.

What we have are three distinct communities: Umumba Ndiagu, Umana Ndiagu, and Obunofia Ndiagu. All are real. All are historically rooted. All are now stained by a name that doesn’t belong to any of them.

As someone hailing from one of the towns in Ezeagu Local Council, I was initially alarmed and sought clarity. I knew of Umana Ndiagu and Umumba Ndiagu, both real towns sharing the “Ndiagu” suffix, and Obunofia Ndiagu, which I ruled out due to its different prefix. My concern deepened as I considered the implications of such a grievous error. A quick survey of various national dailies revealed that most had replicated the same mistake, except for The Guardian Newspapers, which correctly identified the location as Umumba Ndiagu.

This incident underscores a troubling pattern in Nigerian journalism: the frequent dissemination of unchecked information, leading to widespread misinformation. The replication of errors across multiple news outlets suggests a reliance on secondary sources without proper verification. And as such, many media houses, in blind unison, failed to spell the truth.

That was when it dawned on me—again. In Nigeria, even evil gets misidentified. In Nigeria, we don’t just have a problem with violence. We have a problem with how we name the violence. And in the business of truth-telling, calling a place what it is, is the beginning of justice. This isn’t a small error. It’s not a harmless typo. Naming is power. Naming is identity. To misname is to misplace, to erase, to endanger.

Naming is not a small matter. It is the beginning of dignity. It is the way we recognize one another. In Catholic tradition, the name given at baptism is not merely a label. It is a spiritual identity, a calling. These names are chosen with care, often reflecting virtues or honoring saints. When bestowed at baptism, the name signifies the individual’s new identity in the faith community. To name a child is to bless them, to define their place in the world.

In Nigerian culture, names carry profound meaning and significance too. Among the Igbo, the naming ceremony, known as Igu Afa, is a vital rite that connects the child to their lineage, community, and spiritual beliefs. Names often encapsulate the circumstances of birth, parental aspirations, or divine attributes. For instance, names like “Chidiebere” (God is merciful) or “Ifeanyi” (Nothing is impossible with God) are not mere identifiers but narratives of faith and hope.

So when a name is misused, misspelled, or completely fabricated, it is not just an error. It is a cultural erasure. It is the refusal to see people as they are. It’s why misnaming a town like Umumba as “Umuma” is not just a typo — it is a distortion of identity.

The tragedy of “Ichie Million” should not just be that he allegedly killed and buried children. It should be that in trying to tell his story, a section of the Nigerian media killed and buried the truth. In trying to map horror, they lost their compass. They created a town that never was—and in doing so, harmed the towns with similar name.

But this tragedy of naming wrongly isn’t just a problem in newspapers. It is a symptom of a national affliction—a carelessness so wide it leaks into every system we have. A country that cannot name things rightly cannot govern rightly. It cannot heal. It cannot grow.

Think of it: How many Nigerians have gone through life carrying a misspelling of their name on a birth certificate? How many students are stuck at job interviews because their names are spelled differently on their WAEC certificate and their university degree? How many families have had to bury a loved one under a name that isn’t theirs, simply because the hospital, the registrar, or the mortuary attendant wrote it wrong?

We are a people haunted by errors. Official documents carry mistakes like scars. Chukwudi becomes Chuwkudi.

Ngozi becomes Ngozie. Mohammed becomes Muhamad, and that small slip is enough to derail a visa application, delay a scholarship, or deny access to a bank account. Spelling errors become roadblocks. A misplaced letter becomes a wall.

And heaven help you if you try to correct it.

This isn’t just about journalism. It’s about a culture of mislabeling that pervades every layer of Nigerian society. We get people’s names wrong. We get places wrong. We get identities, diagnoses, census figures, and even budgets wrong. And the consequences stretch beyond headlines.

Wrong names lead to wrong arrests. People are incarcerated not because they are guilty, but because someone with a similar name committed a crime. In investigations, suspects disappear into files due to simple clerical errors in spelling. And the system—already overwhelmed—doesn’t care enough to correct it.

In budgeting, states and local governments are often misrepresented or misallocated. Projects are assigned to “ghost towns,” and money disappears into the ether. How many boreholes have been “commissioned” in communities that aren’t on the “Atlas” or the Google map? How many roads have been “rehabilitated” in towns that only exist on paper?

In employment and appointments, people are shortlisted or blacklisted not because of merit or fault, but because their names were mis-entered, or their towns misidentified. Ministries and agencies shuffle names like playing cards, and lives are derailed.

This is a national tragedy: we cannot grow a nation that cannot spell itself correctly.

Try fixing a name on your birth certificate in this country. Or correcting a typo on your National Identity Number. You will enter a bureaucratic labyrinth with no exit. You will write affidavits, swear oaths, pay fees, and chase stamps like a supplicant. All to fix a mistake you didn’t make.

This isn’t just inefficient. It is oppressive. It punishes the victim for the crime of the writer. It tells the citizen, “You are whatever we wrote you to be.” And that is why the story of Ichie Million isn’t just about rituals. It’s about a broken system that cannot name, cannot identify, and cannot account for its own.

Let’s go back to the press—the megaphone that gave this error a passport. The Nigerian media should be the watchdog of society, but too often it acts like a parrot. Once one outlet writes a headline, others copy it word for word. Facts don’t matter. Speed matters. Trending matters. Truth is optional.

So one paper said Umuma Ndiagu, and the rest followed. Except for The Guardian Newspapers, none bothered to cross-check with local authorities, elders, or government records. None of them asked, “Does this place even exist?” And because of that, they manufactured a phantom town, and assigned it a bloody history.

And if this is how we tell stories about death, imagine how we tell stories about governance, corruption, and public health. If we cannot name a village correctly, how can we report a budget honestly? If we cannot spell a town, how can we track a missing child?

When the press fails to get names right, it fails its audience. It fails its duty. It becomes a gossip, not a guardian. And in a country like ours, where emotions run hot and trust runs thin, the damage can be irreversible. A wrong name can start a riot. A misquoted location can trigger communal revenge.

Every misspelling is a misrepresentation. Every wrongly named town is a wrongly blamed people. And every error left uncorrected is a truth abandoned. We become a nation of broken records, where nothing matches, everything contradicts, and no one is accountable.

We need a national re-education on the value of accuracy. Journalists must rediscover the discipline of verification. Bureaucrats must be trained to see names not just as labels, but as identities to be honored. Our data systems must be cleaned, standardised, and reconciled. And our citizens must be empowered to demand that their names be spelled correctly, not as a favor, but as a right.

• Fr. Nkadi, O.P. wrote from Opshot Academy. You can reach him via [email protected]