What was supposed to be a sweet celebration filled with love, laughter, music, and dance in the Ozoro Festival, Delta State, Nigeria, turned into chaos. Loud screams of women and young girls filled everywhere and their efforts to fight back.
The festival was held on the 23rd of March 2026. This traditional gathering was meant to bring people together but it took a rather chaotic turn. Viral clips on social media platforms like tiktok, Instagram and Facebook sparked reactions from online audiences and has raised serious concerns on women’s safety. The series of events that took place were rather disturbing and it caught the attention of the Nigeria police who swung into action to contain the situation and arrested 15 suspects. When questioned, some of the suspects made claims like ”The women were instructed to stay inside”.
Their claims raised questions from concerned denizens: ”What about clueless visitors and women who had last minute errands to run?” Being instructed to stay indoors is an abuse of freedom of movement, they violated this right and treated it as a normal thing. To some people women are weaker vessels and are expected to do as instructed without objections. This is a new era when every individual deserves equal rights and opportunities as a human being. As a result of negligence and ignorance, many lives have been destroyed. In most cases, when a woman is violated she is expected to keep quiet to avoid trouble, shutting her up because she lacks adequate evidence.
Many lives and futures have been destroyed by those that were supposed to protect them, girls like Ochanya Ogbanje, Divine Mbarga and Barakat Bello, among others, were victims of right violation. When things like this happen, most people ask unreasonable questions like ”what was she wearing?” They are oblivious of the fact that these are minors whose only crime was being in the wrong place with the wrong people. In some societies, women are not safe around certain individuals and these individuals proudly own up to their unjust acts. These victims are mothers, daughters, sisters and aunties whose families go through the pain of knowing how unjustly they were treated, these women are human beings and are therefore entitled to education, life, freedom of movement and fair hearing.
The Ozoro festival has further proven that women need protection from inhuman acts. We must strive as a nation, a community and society to see to the end of gender based violence and to make a difference.