command I give to those white folks is promptly obeyed and I rake in millions of naira into my many accounts. I only pretend to be a small boy when I come to sign at my place of primary assignment in Ekiti. Back in Oshogbo, I am a big boy and my parents are happy with me.”

Determined to get more information from him and two others who joined the discussion, the reporter said: “But using juju to make money is evil and has consequences.” He replied: “Yahoo Boys don’t use juju to harm anyone. We only use what we have to retrieve the wealth of Africa the white men took when they colonised our forefathers. We are taking those things from them. When we were using our brains to take it, they got smarter over time and no longer fell for our tricks but now, except you have no human blood in your veins, my juju and incantations from the spirits must capture you for me.”

Herbalist’s view

It was learnt that some herbalists are usually consulted by Yahoo Plus boys to make juju that hypnotise their victims on the Internet. So, Daily Sun decided to investigate the veracity of the claims by visiting some herbalists.

For Chief Odofin Oluwo, he knows that Yahoo boys consult some of his colleagues who are fond of doing juju charms for them but he has never done it for anyone as his spiritual powers are not meant for such evil. He, however, narrated the encounters that some of his colleagues have had with Yahoo boys.

His words: “I recall an encounter a colleague of mine who used to be involved in such practices had with a certain Yahoo Plus boy whom he had requested to bring a lady that could be used for money rituals.

“The requirement, according to him, was that such a lady must possess some spiritual fortunes such as a bright future, which could be manipulated through diabolical means in favour of the Yahoo boy. Once such a lady is found, she would be used and the Yahoo boy would have to continue to take good care of her. The consequences for the lady is that she would never be able to have success or breakthrough in any of her endeavours in life as those fortunes have been converted to the Yahoo boy’s fortune who may end up marrying her or sending her away with a huge amount of money to fix her life.

“Such ladies who fall victim would end up not being able to give birth to a child or she would nurse a strange sickness throughout her lifetime.

“The way the Yahoo boys do this is to introduce the lady to the herbalist who normally would disguise as a friend or relative of the boy and, over time, administer some concoction or the other on the girl to cure some ailment such as menstrual pains or other common ailments for ladies.

“I feel so sad for ladies in Ekiti because one day my friend and colleague told me that there was a certain boy who was instructed by the herbalist to bring one of his girlfriends for such rituals. It happened that the boy had to bring up to 25 girls who were undergraduates for the money-making ritual but none of the girls qualified for the rituals because the herbalist found out that they had all been already used by some other Yahoo Plus boys who earlier dated them.

“Eventually, it was about the 26th or 27th girl the boy brought that qualified for the ritual, to show you how many young greedy girls have ruined their lives in Ekiti with their relationships with Yahoo boys.”

Responding to the issue of prevalence of Internet fraudsters in Ekiti, the state police public relations officer, Mr. Caleb Nwachukwu, said: “When you say that Yahoo-Yahoo boys are everywhere, how can the police know, when not informed, because we are not spirits.

“One of such cases on ritualists that we have caught, like you said, was in Odo-Ekiti, where we busted a shrine of suspected ritualists in their den. We can actually link that to money swindlers and we can say such people are fraudsters.

“But I want to urge members of the public to be very careful and be contented with what they have. It is when you are greedy that you can easily be duped or defrauded. We also wish to advise bank managers to ensure that they screen anyone they are hiring to man their use of technology for banking very well before hiring them. Customers of banks too should be very careful not to give out details of their banking activities such as their password and all that. What I can confidently say is that the police do not just go after some people. It doesn’t mean that we can’t work on suspected cases. If anyone reports cases of fraud to us, the police will investigate. And if such a case is one that doesn’t fall within our purview, we will refer such case to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the ICPC. There is a synergy between the sister organisations and this is being done to ensure effective and efficient security operations