Rev. John Joseph Hayab, Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in the 19 Northern States and FCT.
By Emmanuel Yashim
Rev. John Joseph Hayab, Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), North, has advised youths to desist from cybercrime and money-making ritual, stressing that ill-gotten money cannot make them rich.
Hayab gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Tuesday.
He was speaking on the increasing rate of youth involvement in the heinous act, popularly known as `Yahoo Yahoo’ and `Yahoo-plus’.
He said,” The Bible does not discourage money-making or wealth-creation, however, it says that the love of money is the root of all evil.
“Ill-gotten money cannot make you rich.
“Those involved in cybercrime and ritual-killing take money that does not belong to them and must desist from it.
“Painful, if they do that just to compete with others doing the same, then it is sad.”
According to him, many English words are used to describe certain actions, and such words tend to downplay the gravity of the actions.
“A word like financial embezzlement might sound pedestrian but it means stealing money that is not your own.
“When you steal money, you are a thief.
“That is unacceptable because if that continues, these young people will become nothing but terrors in future.
“No wonder they can carry young girls and end up using them for criminalities or rituals.
“When you begin to kill in order to make money, then you lose your humanity and your peace,’’ he said.
The cleric attributed the increasing youth involvement in such acts to what he called the erosion of parental discipline.
“Parental discipline has been abandoned by many parents and that is why you find some of them encouraging or endorsing or even boasting about what their children are doing.
“Moral decadence has eaten deep into the society and that is why some parents accept this terrible and ungodly means of making money.
“Some parents will never allow that to happen in their homes,” he said.
According to him, if people ignore this and such children grow up to become leaders, with aspiration to become chairmen, governors, senators, and house of representatives’ members, things will become worse.
This, he said, is because they will use their ill-gotten money to buy their ways into elective positions.
“So, I advise parents to teach their children to eschew laziness and embrace hard work, transparency, honesty, and integrity.
“As a nation, we must stand and fight it,’’ the cleric said.
Hayab, who is also the Country Director of Global Peace Foundation, an NGO, said in order to ensure proper youth upbringing the organisation had made youth development one of its areas of major focus.
According to him, the foundation has been promoting girl-child education in Nigeria in the expectation that such effort will grow disciplined mothers.
He said the mothers would in turn train their children to become decent and responsible people that would care for others.
“We ensure that mothers are educated by mentoring young girls to grow and become responsible parents.
“We help girls to enroll in school and complete their education, otherwise they could get enticed and recruited by the so-called `Yahoo Boy’ and that will be a shame. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
