WHAT OZORO MADE ME ASK...

 

Sometimes I wonder if it is even necessary to be angry as a woman when, at the end of the day, it is still women who sometimes hurt other women, sometimes even more than men do.

I found myself thinking about the Ozoro festival assault and one question kept coming back to me: Did the women in Ozoro know about this? Apparently, they did. Then my next question became even more important to me: What did they say about it?

Did anyone think of informing other women and girls about the festival and the strange rules that seemed to come with it? Did nobody think that maybe a simple warning could prevent harm?

Someone close to me even asked, “Did they not have a town crier? Someone that could go around and pass information?”

And that was when I started thinking about the role of the media too. Why does information only come after damage has already been done? Why do we only hear about dangerous traditions after someone has already suffered because of them? Why must awareness always come after pain?

Anyway, back to what troubled me the most.

From what I heard, some women said the incident was exaggerated. Some said the festival was being misrepresented online. Others said the harassment was done by a few misguided youths and not the culture itself. Some even said outsiders should not insult their tradition.

And I kept asking myself again:
Why do some women sometimes defend harmful traditions against other women?

This question stayed with me because of something I witnessed recently.

On my way to an event, a Bolt driver who was taking me there mistakenly scratched another person’s car. It was a small mistake and he knew it. You could see he felt bad. But he couldn’t stop immediately to apologize because he was already causing traffic behind him.

So he kept moving.

Then suddenly we felt a heavy hit from behind. When we turned, we saw it was the same driver whose car he had scratched. He quickly came down to meet her. But the damage she had now caused was much worse than the small scratch he had made.

Right there on the road, my driver immediately started apologizing. He kept saying sorry for the small damage he caused. The woman, who was driving a white Mercedes jeep, kept shouting and insulting him for not stopping earlier. That part, I understood. Anyone would be angry.

But what I did not understand was what happened next.

While he was still apologizing, still trying to explain himself, she suddenly drove forward again.

This time she didn’t just hit the car. She hit the man too because he was standing between both cars and couldn’t move fast enough.

For a moment, he was trapped between metal and anger.

She destroyed his bumper and did not even look like she felt bad about it.

I just sat there in the car, unable to step out. Not because I was afraid exactly, but because I felt ashamed. Ashamed to confront someone who already seemed too angry to listen. Ashamed of the crowd already gathering because traffic had stopped and people love drama.

Thankfully, the man was not seriously hurt. But you could see something in him had dropped. Unlike the woman, who had nothing to repair, he now had serious damage to fix.

And I remember thinking quietly to myself:
Maybe it is useless to be a good person in this world.

That whole incident did not just disturb me as a human being. It disturbed me as a woman too. Because I could not defend what I saw, especially from the woman’s side.

And somehow my mind went back again to Ozoro.

I kept asking myself:

Where were the women when those girls were screaming and running?

Why didn’t anyone stand up for them?

What if those girls were their daughters?

The more I thought about it, the more tired I felt. Not just tired of the incident. Not just tired of the questions.

Just tired.

Tired of trying to understand things like this.

Tired of trying to explain cruelty.

Tired of living in a place where sometimes silence feels louder than the violence itself.

And honestly…

Sometimes I feel very tired of living as a Nigerian.