Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola SAN has advised Nollywood filmmakers against promoting themes on money rituals and kidnapping.
The minister, who described money ritual as a myth, said that the moviemakers were encouraging people to engage in it by promoting it in their movies.
He stated this in his address as a guest speaker at the fourth annual public lecture/symposium organised by the United Action for Change in Lagos earlier in the week. The programme was themed: ‘Security of citizens as a social contract’.
According to the former Lagos State Governor, the movies could be fuelling the belief in money rituals given the rising statistics of those caught with human body parts believed to be meant for money-related rituals.
He appealed to the movie makers to begin to redefine their focus away from money rituals and the likes.
“Some people believe that if you get a man’s head or a woman’s body parts, they could be turned into money. It’s not true! And when you ask people who believe in it if they have seen it happen before, they tell you someone said they had seen it.
“However, it has become a reinforced belief through entertainment, social media and Nollywood. How can human head bring money? Money is paper invented by man, not God. They put the paper in a machine to print what we call money and that is the only place money comes from.
“But the challenge is the belief system. Just think about how many people have been missing – through kidnapping – because some people believe that it exists. The police could tell us the number of people they have apprehended with human parts, such as skulls. This belief system must go.
“Therefore, all of us, including those who make the films, must reverse the story and start selling a new story that money is printed in a machine and not through any other way like money rituals,” Fashola said.
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