Opinions of Saturday, 28 August 2021
Columnist: Tony Ogunlowo
The new breed of femme Fatales is young, pretty – and they can kill you!
The ongoing case of Chidinma Ojukwu has gripped – and shocked – the nation and the one question everybody is asking is why did a young lady like her kill a grown man.
The answer is simply – Money!
If her victim, the late Michael Usifo Ataga, wasn’t well-connected and the police were forced to act she might have got away with it: how many homicides go un-investigated in Nigeria every day! Perhaps hundreds, the police service is stretched to its limits and doesn’t have the trained personnel to deal with every crime committed. And unless the victim’s family has the clout or money the police will sweep the matter under the carpet (-that’s if it’s reported to them in the first place). And if she was caught, as she was, she’ll claim she was acting in self-defence (- a plea she’s already entered) and considering her petite size in relation to her victim, with a good lawyer and a hefty bribe to the police she’ll get off. And the opinionated media circus that followed her arrest means her court trial, later on, will be flawed due to conflicting stories or ‘confessions’: under scrutiny by ‘expert’ journalists and OAPs she has changed her version of events countless times.
Whichever way you look at the case what we are seeing here is a pre-meditated crime: pretty young girls are using themselves as (- or used as) bait to entrap wealthy men. Not content in being ‘side chicks’ where they’ll get an apartment, car, allowance and the occasional jaunt to Dubai, they want it all. And to do that they’ll kill their wealthy patrons and steal whatever they can. Normally prostitutes do this but now it's spreading.
Again, there are no records to indicate how many men have been robbed and killed by these femme Fatales.
To claim most of these young women, act on their own is an understatement: to subdue a fully-grown man and force him to hand over critical information about himself, such as bank details and PIN numbers, is hardly the work of one small girl. They’ll be others and in the case of Chidinma, the others are still possibly at large. If she sticks to her ‘self-defence’ story the worse she can be charged with will be involuntary manslaughter, taking his money will be subject to debate as whether he gave her access to his bank accounts or not. As the Dead can’t speak, we shall never know.
A honey-trap, using pretty young girls to snare men, is as old as the Bible itself when Samson’s enemies used Delilah to trap him and cut off his hair. Since the Chidinma case became public knowledge other similar stories have started to emerge; a wealthy businessman was stabbed to death in a hotel in Port Harcourt and his ‘girlfriend’ and her two friends ran off with his Lexus SUV. She was only caught when the victim’s family activated the tracker in the vehicle and tracked her down; other men have been found dead in hotel rooms foaming at the mouth, an indication of poison administered, with all their valuables and female companions gone. Or they just get their gang to kidnap him, the old-fashion way, hold him for ransom and then kill him off after it's paid so there won’t be any witnesses to the crime. And as usual the police won’t bother to investigate properly. It seems Chidinma and Co must have all read “My Sister, the Serial Killer” a novel by Oyinkan Braithwaite in which the lead character, Ayoola, embarks upon a killing spree, killing off all her boyfriends – but doesn’t steal their valuables – and gets away with it.
The question we should be asking, as a society, is why do young people – not just girls – kill other human beings without thinking about the implications. Has life become so cheap you can kill a few people without feeling any remorse and think you can get away with it? (- Cultists, kidnappers, armed robbers etc take note!).
A lot of people will claim that poverty and the prospect of a bleak future drives a lot of young people to commit heinous crimes. Perhaps. But it’s not an excuse to take a life because you want to show off on Instagram and Facebook. When you are part of a generation that hankers after fast easy cash and fame you’ll undoubtedly turn to crime to make your dreams a reality: if Chidinma had got away with her crime and bought herself a brand-new SUV nobody would ask her where she got the money from.
Chidinma and Co won’t be the last to bump off their wealthy patrons. There will be others. As long as society doesn’t have anything bad to say about people who live flashy extravagant lifestyles and can’t prove their source of income these sorts of crimes will continue. So, if you are a man who hangs out with ‘sidechicks’, other people’s wives or prostitutes you better watch your back before somebody sticks a knife in it!
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