On How Control Over Women Remains Sanctioned: From Ozoro to the Nigerian Senate.

Male violence against women, political exclusion, and culturally sanctioned policing and silencing of women’s rights and agency are not isolated incidents but different expressions of the same system.

It is a sinister phenomenon that Nigerian women are not losing power by accident, as we can see across culture, politics, and media, the same pattern keeps repeating where Nigerian women are displaced, replaced, or spoken over. We are attacked in public, removed from power, assaulted, murdered, harassed, and molested, and eventually spoken for/over in our own spaces.

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The end goal is to ensure that men retain control over women’s bodies, women’s access to power, and even women’s voices. This has been the case from time immemorial, but the only thing that has changed is how those phenomena show up, whether it is through sanctioned “cultural practices,” “corporate policies,” or moral values imposed upon women who do not abide.

If we analyse this closely, we can see that the pattern is the same; the only difference is its presentation.

When “culture” sanctions violence and assault against women and girls.

On 20th March 2025, we received online reports on Twitter of students crying out about a “raping festival”, yes, you read that right, of women and girls in the Oruamudhu community in Ozoro, Isoko North LGA of Delta State, with videos circulating showing women being publicly harassed, stripped, and sexually assaulted by groups of men “according to tradition.” A fertility ritual, held every three years in the Oruamudhu community of Ozoro to pray for children, was hijacked by men and young boys to harass, grope, molest, and rape women.

These acts were not hidden; they were filmed and shared online as a warning for other women in the community, in full view of the community. Because it happened within a cultural event, the violence was not immediately treated with the urgency it deserved. It was initially absorbed into explanations about tradition and celebration, as though context could soften what was occurring.

The authorities stepped in to condemn the acts and call for investigations after widespread outrage on social media. The outrage alone does not explain why this festival evolved into what it is or what allowed it to happen in the first place.

Why are men allowed to act collectively, in public, with enough confidence to treat women’s bodies as accessible? This is an example of what control looks like at the cultural level: not always hidden, but often normalised just enough to take place.

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Institutions: When Women’s Power Is Temporary

At the level of formal governance, the same pattern appears in more controlled ways. A recent political decision saw Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan removed from Nigeria’s delegation to the 70th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) in New York and replaced by a male senator, yes, A MALE SENATOR. This happened in a system where women already hold a very small fraction of political positions. Senator Natasha was being punished for speaking out about the sexual harassment she faced in the National Assembly, as I wrote ***in this article.*** The forum itself was centred on women’s issues, and the opportunity to participate was significant. And yet, a woman was removed, and a man was inserted as punishment for a woman who dared to speak up and express her agency.

These decisions reflect a broader reality, which says that women’s access to power is often conditional, and when it is withdrawn, it is frequently replaced by male authority as a warning to other women that their power can be given and taken away at any time if they are not “well behaved”.

This is infuriating because why is women’s representation so reversible even in spaces meant for women? This is what control looks like at the institutional level: structured, procedural, and difficult to challenge once enacted.

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Narrative: When Women Are Interpreted

This control can also be very subtle and seem harmless through narrative and (comedic) representation. Across media, advocacy spaces, and public conversations, men are often given priority and platforms to speak on and about women’s experiences. A male skit maker was invited to an IWD conference as a panel speaker to share “insights” based on characters he performs (exaggerates). Characters shaped by interpretations of women’s lives, not their lived experience. This was framed as support or awareness. How on earth???

This begs the question as to why women are not consistently centred as the primary voices in discussions about their own realities. When lived experience is filtered through performance, authority moves away from those directly affected and toward those who can interpret, package, and present those experiences the best. If this isn’t misogyny, I don’t know what is. Over time, this shapes how women’s issues are understood and whose voices are treated as credible. This is what control looks like at the narrative level: subtle, influential, and often overlooked.

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A Pattern, Not Isolated Events

Each of these situations can be explained on its own. A cultural festival gone wrong. A political reshuffle. A conference programming choice.

But put together, they point to the fact that culturally, women’s bodies are made vulnerable in ways that can be collectively enacted, institutionally, women’s presence in power is limited and reversible, and in public discourse, women’s voices are mediated and displaced by men’s voices. Women are not fully in control, not of their bodies, not of institutional power, and not of the narratives that shape both. As a woman, it is hard not to feel helpless when these things happen.

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What Would It Take to Change This?

If the problem is systemic, then the response must be structural.

1. Cultural Practices Must Have Legal Limits; no cultural framing should shield male violence against women from accountability. Public assaults must lead to immediate arrests and visible prosecution, and local authorities must be required to intervene in real time, not after public outrage. Community leadership structures should also be held legally responsible when violence is enabled under their watch. If something can happen publicly, accountability must also be public

2. Women’s representation must be secured and codified in law, not benevolent or symbolic. I strongly believe that inclusion is not enough if it can be reversed at will and without consequence. Binding quotas in significant institutions must be established for women’s representation in political delegations and leadership roles, and the replacement of women with men in spaces designated for women’s participation must be legally prohibited. It should be the job of independent oversight bodies to review decisions that aim to remove women from positions of authority, rather than an arbitrary process enforced by several men’s egos.

3. Feminist women must be front and centre in public discourse & decisions about women. It is not enough to just elect any woman into a position of power because it makes no difference if a maiden of patriarchy is put into a position of power to protect women; she will be offering said women to the wolves, who are the patriarchs and gatekeepers. There is no difference in that situation.

4. Conferences and panels addressing issues affecting women should adopt women-first participation standards. Funding and media organisations must prioritise women-led storytelling and analysis, and institutions must actively challenge the overrepresentation of male voices in women-centred conversations, because if women are not leading the conversation, it is already compromised. Women’s experiences do not require interpretation to be heard, especially not from men.

4. There Must Be Space to Question These Patterns. Silence is one of the most effective tools of control, and in many of these spaces, women can clearly see what is happening, who is being centred, who is being displaced, and how power is being maintained, but speaking about it comes with consequences. You risk being isolated, dismissed, labelled difficult, or even losing opportunities altogether.

Because of this, people stay quiet, not because they don’t see the problem, but because they understand the cost of naming it. That silence then allows these patterns to continue unchallenged, protected by fear and social pressure. If we cannot speak honestly about what is happening, if we cannot question these patterns without punishment, then nothing changes. These systems persist not only because they exist, but because they are shielded from scrutiny. To fix a problem, you have to first name it.

Conclusion

It is easy to look at all these instances mentioned and see them as separate issues, but that is not the case, as they are different expressions of the same structure that continues to position women at the margins of control, even when “inclusion” suggests otherwise.

The issue is not whether change is happening, but rather whether that “change” is shifting power or simply reshaping how it operates. When power remains in the same hands, even under a new language, the outcome does not fundamentally change for women.