Why They Join

Monday. 11th May, 2026.

03:15 PM.

Mid-day entry:

I’m currently staring at my laptop’s blank screen. Obsidian is open, waiting for my words like a patient person I’ve been keeping on hold. I have things to write, things to say.

And yet. 🫠

My phone is in my other hand, opened to X, and I’m deep in the UNIBEN cult clash drama that apparently decided today was the right day to trend.

Monday.

How classic.

Well, somewhere between scrolling and skimming quoted tweets, a question keeps pounding against my chest and refuses to leave:

Why be in a cult?

Genuinely, I’m not asking it the way people ask it on the timeline – with performative shock and that careful distance people create so that they can feel safe and separate.

I’m asking it curiously.

What is someone looking for when they walk into that?

Because it’s never really about the violence, is it?

Nobody (in their right mind) wakes up and thinks, I want to carry machetes and make enemies.

That’s not the pitch.

The pitch, if I had to guess, is something much quieter. Belonging. Protection. The feeling that you matter to a group that will show up for you. That there are people who have your back in a place that, let’s be honest, doesn’t always feel safe.

Nigerian universities can be isolating in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced them. You arrive far from home, the institution isn’t particularly interested in your well-being, and the social structures can be brutal. In that kind of environment, a group that says we move together must feel like oxygen.

I’m not defending anything. I’m just refusing to pretend people join cults because they’re broken or stupid.

That framing is too easy, and easy framings are usually wrong.

What scares me more is that the need underneath it — I want to belong somewhere that will protect me — is one I recognise.

I just got lucky with where I tried to meet it.

Anyway.

It’s now 03:45 PM and Obsidian is still waiting.