There is a moment in every Nigerian family’s life when someone, usually an elder, says the words: “It’s culture. We cannot change it.”
And for years, we went along with it. We have sat through traditions that made us uncomfortable. We have watched young men do things we would never allow in any other context, all under the banner of “what our forefathers did.” We have told ourselves that questioning it means disrespecting our ancestors. That preserving heritage matters more than protecting a woman in the moment.
Then the videos from Ozoro surfaced. What we saw was not culture. It was a mob of men chasing women down streets, dragging them off motorcycles, tearing their clothes, and grabbing at their bodies. All of it is happening in broad daylight. All of it excused, at first, as “tradition.” A fertility blessing. A harmless festival. A thing our people do. But should such depraved culture exist in the first place?
The Uncomfortable Truth About “Our People Do It”
Every society has practices that outlive their purpose. Slavery was once tradition. Child marriage was once a tradition. The denial of education to girls was once a tradition. In Nigeria, we have outlawed some of these things, not because they were cultural, but because they were wrong. Because the law stepped in where conscience failed.
The difference between then and now is that we are the generation with the power to decide what survives. We are the ones raising children, hosting festivals, planning weddings, shaping what the next generation will call “our people’s way.”
So when a community leader says “some youths misinterpreted the festival,” what he is really saying is: we never taught them otherwise. When an elder says, “It was just harassment, not rape,” what he is really saying is: we have drawn the line somewhere, and we have drawn it in the wrong place.
Because here is the truth: if you teach young men that a woman’s body is communal property on certain days, you do not get to be surprised when they treat it as communal property on other days.
The Burden of Being the Generation That Asks
Questioning tradition is exhausting. It makes you the difficult daughter, the disrespectful youth, the one who “does not understand.” I know because I have been that person. In my own family, in my own community, I have sat through conversations where I was expected to nod while someone explained why a practice that harms women is actually a blessing.
But here is what I have learned: the people who defend these things are not monsters. They are often good people, kind people, people who would never personally harm a woman. They are simply people who have never been asked to think about what they are defending. They have inherited a script, and they are reading it faithfully.
Our job, therefore, is not to shame them. That means asking uncomfortable questions at family gatherings. It means telling your uncle that no, you will not be participating in the part of the ceremony where women are chased. It means teaching your sons, from the time they can walk, that no tradition, no festival, no elder’s permission gives them the right to touch a woman who has not said yes.
What We Carry Forward
The Ozoro community leaders have since condemned the violence. Arrests have been made. The government has ordered an investigation. All of this is necessary. But the deeper work is ours.
It is in how we talk about culture at the dinner table. It is in the ceremonies we choose to continue and the parts we quietly drop. It is in the children we raise to know that heritage is not a weapon, that ancestors do not demand violence, that the past is not a prison.
We are not the first generation to ask these questions. But we might be the last generation that has to ask them, if we do the work now. If we stop nodding. If we start saying, clearly and firmly, that this barbaric practice is not culture but rather harm veiled in heritage. And we will not celebrate it.
The women of Ozoro deserve an apology, yes. But more than that, they deserve a community where they never have to hide. Where festivals are not warnings. Where the phrase “our people do it” is never again used to excuse the inexcusable.
We cannot change what happened in Ozoro. But we can decide, in our own families, in our own communities, that it will not happen again. Not in our name. Not under our watch. Not with our silence.
Because culture is not what we inherit, it is what we choose to carry forward. And we get to choose.
