The recent BBC Africa Eye documentary, “Money Rituals: Africa’s Deadliest Taboo”, is a harrowing but essential piece of investigative journalism. It pulls back the curtain on a brutal black market in Sierra Leone and beyond, where human body parts are trafficked for ritual purposes. Undercover footage exposes so-called ‘juju’ healers explicitly offering skulls and organs to clients seeking wealth or power, while grieving families tell stories of vanished loved ones.
The documentary confirms what many in our field already know: these are not ghost stories. They are organised, profit-driven crimes that exploit deep-seated cultural beliefs. But the film also reveals a critical, and often fatal, flaw in the response: the investigative process itself is broken.
We see police struggling – not just with resources, but with methodology. The evidence at a ritual crime scene isn’t merely physical; it is phenomenological. It exists in the space between a material object and the profound belief in its power. When an officer, influenced by fear or personal superstition, avoids collecting a ritual item, or fails to document the specific symbolic arrangement, they aren’t just ignoring a “curse”; they are destroying the very evidence that could convict a murderer.
As a Divisional Officer in Jigawa State, I have handled numerous cases involving witchcraft allegations, but one incident continues to haunt me. We were responding to a distress call: a middle-aged woman was being beaten by her community. The accusation was familiar: “She is a witch.”
When we arrived, she was bleeding, terrified, and surrounded by a crowd driven by panic and misinformation. We rescued her, arrested the perpetrators, and initiated prosecution. But the emotional wounds ran deeper.
Days later, she attempted suicide. When asked why, she said words no officer forgets:
I am tired. They say I am a witch. They no longer see me as a human being.
Her family eventually agreed to relocate her for safety and healing, but this was not just an assault case – it was a stark illustration of how stigma destroys lives long after the violence ends.
More recently, in December 2025, Funmilayo Lasisi, a 38-year-old officer with the Federal Road Safety Corps and her 10-year-old daughter, Sewa, were murdered. The primary suspect was Victor Fajemirokun – a 40-year-old businessman, who had been Funmilayo’s lover. Fajemirokun orchestrated the crime after being convinced by a Muslim cleric and herbalist he met on TikTok that his lack of business success was due to Funmilayo “using his glory”.
Under the false pretence of seeking a “spiritual cleansing” to free himself from this perceived spiritual grip, Fajemirokun lured the victims from Ogun State to Ijebu-Jesa in Osun State to meet with ritual practitioners. The victims were led into a bush under the guise of performing rituals, where they were brutally murdered. Accomplices confessed that the mother and daughter had their throats slit, after which Funmilayo’s body was dismembered for organ harvesting.
Even law enforcement officers are not immune to the influence of deep-seated superstitions. In November 2025, Inspector John, a police officer attached to the Anti-Cultism unit of the Igbogene police unit in Bayelsa State, was arrested for the brutal assault of his own three children in Yenagoa after accusing them of witchcraft. The children were saved only after concerned neighbours alerted the State Security Patrol unit – Doo Akpor – who rescued the victims and transported them to a hospital for treatment, where they were aided by the International Federation of Women Lawyers – FIDA – the National Association of Women Against Gender Based Violence, and the Do Foundation.
The need for better investigative tools
Across Africa, belief-driven crimes involve symbols, ritual objects, staging, and community narratives. Traditional homicide protocols often fail to tackle these cases, because they were not designed to interpret symbolic arrangements, manage community fear, distinguish belief from evidence, handle stigma-driven violence, or preserve “ritual” items as forensic exhibits.
This gap between the nature of the crime and the tools used to investigate it is where justice dies. We cannot apply a standard homicide kit to a scene designed to communicate with intangible forces and expect a conviction. We need a new protocol.
When investigators step into a ritual crime scene, they’re not just walking into a place of violence – they’re entering a world charged with belief. Skulls arranged in a circle, powders scattered on the ground, a blood-stained cloth tied to a tree. To the community, these objects whisper of curses and spirits. To the law, they are evidence.
That’s where the SPIRIT Protocol comes in – the Structured Protocol for Investigating Ritual and Intangible Threats, with its mantra: “Treat the intangible with tangible rigor.” This approach does not ask investigators to believe in witchcraft or validate superstition. Instead it insists that symbols, ritual objects, and community narratives be taken seriously as sources of forensic intelligence – not because they are magical, but because they often point to very real human harm.
The protocol relies on five guiding principles. First is the environmental documentation. Investigators are trained to record not just the physical crime scene, but the wider social setting. Ritual crimes should always be viewed in their environment, holistically. Objects identified by the community as “ritual” should be carefully documented, and witnesses encouraged to describe what they believe they saw or felt. These accounts are recorded without the officer endorsing the beliefs behind them. In the recent Zambian witchcraft trial, for example, bottled chameleon, white powder, red cloth, and animal tail were central to the trial and conviction of suspects.
Second comes comprehensive preservation. Items linked to belief – no matter how strange or unsettling – are treated as standard evidence, and logged through a formal chain of custody. This prevents critical clues from being lost simply because officers were reluctant to touch objects considered “cursed”. In some witchcraft cases, owls and winnowing baskets can be part of the prosecution evidence.
Third is pattern identification over myth. Rather than becoming absorbed in local folklore, the protocol focuses attention on recurring features found across money rituals, accusation-driven attacks, and trafficking networks. This shift allows investigators to see the organised criminal behaviour hiding behind the language of magic. This can be seen in Southern Africa, with “witch-hunters” who go around “hunting” for witches. Usually, their pattern of behaviour is similar when moving from village to village.
Fourth comes sober sequence reconstruction. Events are rebuilt using material facts alone – who was present, what was done, and in what order. By stripping away supernatural explanations, investigators produce timelines that can withstand scrutiny in court. In the Sierra Leone documentary, such assessment can be challenging because of the presence of traditional healers in the inner cordon of the crime scene.
Finally, there is the evidence triage. Forensic evidence suitable for prosecution is clearly separated from belief-based intelligence used for safeguarding and prevention. This protects the integrity of the case while still allowing police to engage meaningfully with community dynamics.
Taken together, the SPIRIT Protocol professionalises the investigation of ritual-related crimes. It shields officers from personal superstition and ensures that justice is grounded in evidence, not fear.
One way to think about it is through archaeology. When an archaeologist opens an ancient tomb, local communities may warn of curses and spirits – but the work continues with careful tools, methodical recording, and scientific discipline. The SPIRIT Protocol serves a similar purpose for investigators: a brush and trowel that clears away the dust of superstition, revealing the hard evidence beneath.
The tragedies documented in “Money Rituals” are not unsolvable. They are investigatively underserved. The SPIRIT Protocol provides the missing manual. It professionalises the response, protects officers by giving them clear, non-esoteric procedures to follow, and most importantly, it serves both justice and security.
By separating evidence from belief, we can build cases against murderers and traffickers using court-admissible facts, while simultaneously using the full spectrum of intelligence, forensics and crime scene investigation to understand and disrupt the criminal networks that feed on superstition and despair.
We cannot afford to let fear of the intangible undermine the pursuit of tangible justice. It’s time to investigate with both eyes open.
