Cultists, including those off-campus, to bag 21 years in jail

Eiye, Aiye, Vikings, and other confraternities in Lagos are now more stridently outlawed, and anybody, students or otherwise, convicted of cultism will be handed 21 years in jail.

For anyone found guilty of abetting cultists, or willfully allow their properties to be used as meeting points by cultists will bag 15 years.

That is according to the Prohibition of Unlawful Societies and Cultism of 2021 bill which Gov Babjide Sanwo-Olu just signed into law March 15.

The State’s House of Assembly passed the anti-cultism bill last month.

Sanwo-Olu assented to the bill at the swearing-in event for newly appointed members of the State’s Public Procurement Agency Governing Board and two Permanent Secretaries held at Banquet Hall in the State House, Alausa, on Monday.

The anti-cultism law repeals the Cultism (Prohibition) Law of 2007 (now Cap. C18, Laws of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2015) and provides for more stringent punitive measures, and widens the dragnet to cover the general public.

The previous law applied to only students of tertiary institutions.

Sanwo-Olu said the State had suffered the negative effects of unlawful societies and cultism, stressing that the new law will make parents more responsible and show more interest in the up-bringing of their children and wards.