In mid March 2026, images and videos from Ozoro, in the heart of Isoko land, spread quickly across Nigeria and beyond. Young women were chased, assaulted, and humiliated in public during what was widely described as a festival. The reaction was immediate. Outrage poured in. Social media named it. Headlines amplified it. And within hours, a narrative had formed.
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But beneath the speed of that reaction lies a deeper and more unsettling truth. What happened in Ozoro was not a festival of violence. It was a crime. And yet, somewhere between what occurred and how it was understood, something dangerous emerged. Culture was invoked. Tradition was questioned. And in that moment, the line between explanation and excuse began to blur.
The first responsibility of any society is clarity. What happened in Ozoro must be called what it is. Young women were harmed. Their dignity was violated. No language, no interpretation, no cultural framing should soften that reality. When harm occurs, truth must come before narrative.
And yet, there is a pattern we must confront honestly. When societies struggle to explain what has gone wrong, they often reach for something larger than the individuals responsible. A story. A belief. A tradition. Something that absorbs blame and shifts attention away from accountability. It is an instinct that feels subtle, but its consequences are profound.
In Ozoro, that instinct appeared in real time. The language of tradition entered the conversation almost immediately. Some believed it. Others rejected it. But the damage of that suggestion was already done. Because once violence is linked, even loosely, to culture, it risks being misunderstood, minimized, or worse, justified.
This is where we must be careful. Culture is not a vague idea that can be shaped to fit any action. It is lived. It is guided. It is protected by those who understand its meaning. Voices from the Isoko and Urhobo communities have made this clear. There is no tradition that celebrates violence against women. The Aluedor festival, often mentioned in connection with Ozoro, is a fertility rite, observed with intention, structure, and respect. It is not chaos. It is not aggression. It is not harm.
What happened was not culture. It was a distortion.
And that distinction matters, because when distortion is allowed to pass as tradition, something deeper is lost. Not just truth, but responsibility. The individuals who commit harm are no longer seen as accountable actors. They are absorbed into a narrative that makes their actions seem inevitable, even acceptable. That is how societies begin to normalize what should never be normal.
It is never the powerful who suffer when this happens. It is always the vulnerable. Those without protection. Those without voice. Those whose pain becomes secondary to the debate about meaning. In Ozoro, the focus must remain where it belongs. On those who were harmed. On their right to dignity. On the necessity of justice.
There is also a wider lesson here, one that extends beyond a single town or a single moment. A society is not only defined by its traditions, but by how it responds when those traditions are misrepresented. Silence creates space for confusion. Confusion creates space for misuse. And misuse, if left unchallenged, begins to reshape perception itself.
The role of leadership becomes critical at that point. Cultural custodians, community leaders, and institutions must speak with clarity, not only to defend tradition, but to define it. Because when they do not, others will. And those definitions may not protect the people they are meant to serve.
The law must also stand firm. Not symbolically, but decisively. Crimes cannot be debated into abstraction. They must be addressed, investigated, and prosecuted. Anything less signals that harm can be absorbed into narrative and forgotten.
There is a deeper danger that often goes unnoticed. The most damaging acts are not always the ones that shock us in the moment. They are the ones we slowly begin to explain away. The ones we learn to accommodate through language, through repetition, through silence. When violence becomes something we can rationalize, even briefly, it begins to take root in ways that are difficult to undo.
That is why this moment matters. Not just for Ozoro, but for the kind of society Nigeria chooses to be. One that protects its heritage, yes, but never at the cost of its people. One that understands that culture is not diminished by truth, but strengthened by it.
We can honor tradition without distorting it. We can preserve identity without sacrificing dignity. We can tell our stories without allowing them to become shields for harm.
Ozoro is not just an incident to be remembered. It is a test. A test of whether we are willing to separate truth from narrative. Whether we are willing to confront harm without hiding behind explanation. Whether we understand that the value of any culture lies not in how loudly it is defended, but in how well it protects the people within it.
If there is one truth that must remain when the noise fades, it is this. Culture does not excuse harm. Tradition does not absorb responsibility. And any society that allows the two to be confused risks losing both its moral clarity and its humanity.
The post OZORO: Not tradition, not culture, just violence, by Stephanie Shaakaa appeared first on Vanguard News.
