Cynthia: From Social Network To Social Death?

By Sulaimon Mojeed-Sanni

Life is supposed to be precious and guarded jealously by all and sundry but this simple tenet of life seems to have been misconstrued by some disgruntled youths who decided to cut short the promising life of young Cynthia Osokogu. The late Cynthia was a Post Graduate Student of Nassarawa State University and owns a boutique in the same town. She was the only daughter of General Frank  Osokogu (retd), and went missing in July this year only to be discovered murdered by her supposed “friends” from one of the most widely used social media by 21st century youth – Facebook.

The Nigeria Police in a bid to unearth the cause of the death had arrested six persons, amongst them are two university students, a pharmacist and an employee of the hotel where the 24-year-old post-graduate student was murdered. Details abound on how the deceased was lured from her Nasarawa base to Lagos with the belief that she wanted to transact legal business and strengthen her “online friendship”. How she was robbed, raped and eventually strangled by the brutes she thought were friends became a mystery. The Nigerian Police in one of its rare instances of constructive policing is lived up to the billing by apprehending the suspects by tracing call-logs and pictures from CCTV footage installed in the hotel. We can only hope that the case would get to a logical end and the culprit made to face the wrath of the law.

The major underlying deficiency of the 21st century youth in this part of the world is the abhorrence of hardwork, unquenchable greed and thirst for wealth, low self esteem, loss of focus and priority for frivolity. Having been curtailed largely from advance fee fraud otherwise known as Yahoo-Yahoo by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which is usually between Nigerians and unsuspecting foreigners, Nigerian youths have moved to haunting themselves on a platform meant to unite and create pathway for collective progress.  The youths rather than cultivate profitable network of friendship on social media (Facebook, 2go, Whatsapp, twitter, BlackBerry messenger etc), have resorted to fraudulent act and more recently, murder. The driving motive of an average youth to get involved in the social media today, is not to seek knowledge, build study group or make sincere friendship but to prostitute, fornicate, and engage in immoral activities. These annoying acts are so rampant among secondary school and university students that it taints everyone in that category as a culprit.

For the records,  social networking is supposed to be an online service, platform, or site that facilitates the building of social relations amongst people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional information. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. The advent of GPRS enabled phones and BlackBerry, has made social networking an all comers affair thereby bridging gaps, reducing call cost and bringing the global world into an individual’s palms. In the political and administrative sense, social media have helped the youth to be more conscious through spontaneous and uncensored information dissemination. This, to a reasonable extent, has doused off the divide and rule tactics of our inconsiderate leaders. Social media is an avenue that has helped in building a conscious generation of youths, who are broad minded to lead in the nearest future. Again, it has turned into a platform where youths disintegrate ethos of morality and common decency.

It saddens the heart to note that while some youths have taken the social media to be a tool for saving lives in the face of our failing health care system, like the recent collective  Operation SaveFunmi, a patient diagnosed with malignant sarcoma, a kind of cancer at the shoulder region,  another segment of the same youth, sees nothing other than to maim and kill. From the unfolding youth delinquency and bastardisation of the social media, it won’t be out of point to suggest that there should be greater parental/guardian’s concern about what their wards do in the name of surfing the net. Our moral and ethical web is weak and until the parents and the society at large downplay the get-rich-at-all-costs syndrome, we might be having a hurricane-like catastrophe knocking.

•Mojeed-Sanni wrote in from Lagos. Email: [email protected]