adminH-Metro Reporter
THE bizarre underground toes-for-sale reports, which have taken social media by storm, are just an elaborate hoax, according to the Government.
And, of course, that’s true.
After all, it’s just yet another chapter, in these wild get-rich-quick schemes which, over the years, have emerged across Africa.
In South Africa, a leading advertising agent was forced to apologise “unreservedly” for a pamphlet and website which offered money for body parts.
It was supposed to be part of a campaign to advertise a South African horror movie.
The campaign included a pamphlet saying “Dr Uba pays the best prices for all your body parts and organs . . . We pay keen cash for eyes (up to R5000 in cash), breast (up to R1800), tongue (up to R2500 in cash!).”
It didn’t help that the website showed pictures of a semi-naked woman who was about to go into surgery. South Africa also happens to be the birthplace of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
He was born in Pretoria but now lives in the United States. In November last year, an article was published in The Cable under a headline, “Did Elon Musk Use Human Parts For Money Rituals?”
The aim of the article was to again preach that hard work, instead of rituals, is the answer in the search for riches.
In February this year, worried by the increasing spate of cultism and ritual killings, especially among school kids in Nigeria’s south western areas, there were calls for the government and parents to unite in stopping this menace.
A leading Nigerian Government official delivered probably the perfect response to the saga in which these ritual killings were being conducted by people who believed it could make them rich.
“When we think of being wealthy, it’s beneficial to consider wealth in different areas of our lives,” the Vanguard newspaper quoted him as telling the communities.
“We cannot be truly wealthy if one or more areas of our life is causing us stress, turmoil, and having an impact on our physical health.
“If someone is wealthy financially but has poor health or poor relationships, would that person be considered as being truly wealthy?
“How many Dangotes, Mike Adenugas or Otedolas have been produced by ritualists? Do we even have facts to justify this search for riches through diabolical means?
“If the greatest and visible products of ritual riches are poo eating, blood sucking, walking naked in the streets or lying in caskets or even passing a lonely night at the cemetery, sleeping with one’s mother or daughter and yet none has been able to match the Otedolas of this world naira for naira, then I believe that hard work and decency can produce a better and more peaceful results.”
There have been similar tales, across the whole sub-Saharan part of the continent, where some people believe their fortunes could be transformed, overnight, by some rituals, including the sale of body parts.
Of course, none of these wild expectations have come true.
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter