Oloolu And The Question Nigeria Keeps Avoiding — Whose Job Was It To Protect Her?

By Aiyepola Abayomi

Orisha comes from “eni ori sha da”, one specially created by ori. These were once human beings.

Whatever led to their deification also shaped the rules and taboos that now guard their worship, and that detail matters far more than most people realize when a story like the Oloolu masquerade episode breaks into public conversation.

I write this as a Yoruba man raised across Muslim and Christian lines, with enough grounding in both traditions to speak carefully. The Quran says “lakum deenukum waliya deen”, to you your religion, to me mine. Suratul Kafirun closes on the same note; if they will not join you in your religion, leave them to theirs. That instruction is not indifference. It is discipline.

Even the prophets model this restraint. Prophet Musa/Moses was brought before Pharaoh’s magicians, not the other way round.

Prophet Ibrahim/Abraham confronted his father’s gods only because his own family tried to force him into their worship, and he paid for that confrontation in a fire that only his Lord could quench.

The lesson survives every generation. No one is sent out to go looking for gods to challenge. One is only required to answer with sense when they come looking.

Because these orishas were once flesh, tradition holds that they understand human weakness.

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Priests who serve them describe a consistent pattern. A person who breaks a taboo quietly, and shows remorse away from public eyes, is often left alone.

It is contempt, afojudi, open mockery, that draws consequence, a principle not far removed from what Islam and Christianity already teach about rendering unto Caesar what belongs to him. What likely sealed the young lady’s fate was never the seeing. It was the posting on TikTok, where someone, possibly one of the custodians, must have seen it.

The custodians of these traditions have always built in protection for the ordinary person. Oloolu’s own handlers move ahead of it through bush paths, not out of the masquerade’s own discretion, but to keep people out of its path entirely, so no one is caught unaware.

Oro operates in the same spirit, though the rule differs. It is not that Oro kills on sight. It is that a woman must never see it at all, which is why it moves at midnight, deep in the night, with enough warning sent ahead for everyone to remain indoors.

Both traditions carry the same intention at their core, to warn people away long before danger arrives, so that whatever consequence exists rarely has to fall on anyone at all.

This episode brought to mind a scene from a film I have not stopped thinking about, “Onfo Loke”, produced around 1999 to 2001 by Baba Segun Alli Rasco, who also gave Nigerians “Iyawo America”, starring Prof Sola Fosudo.

In one scene, a mother defies a curfew tied to an appeasement rite to save her snake bitten baby. The initiates cure the child out of pity, then strike her dumb for witnessing what she was told to avoid.

She is only healed after her father in law, a commissioner of police and fellow initiate, insists she be judged by the rules of an initiate rather than an outsider, since her defiance came from a mother’s fear, not disrespect.

Even fiction remembers what many forget. Mercy has always lived alongside the rule.

A reader who came across my earlier reflection on this issue asked a fair question; if tradition can punish a girl for one broken taboo, why did it not stop the kidnapping of the schoolchildren who spent days in captivity before regaining their freedom last month?

The answer is simple once examined closely. A taboo protects one boundary tied to one spirit. Break it, and the consequence follows almost the way a live wire shocks a person whether the touch was deliberate or not.

Kidnapping is a different order of evil entirely, a crime against a whole community, never something one masquerade’s personal rule was built to police alone.

In the old order, protection against raiders came from Ogun and Sango, and it required priests, warriors and leaders acting together, never one spirit acting solo. Organised men with guns and modern tools were never what any single taboo was designed to meet.

Even the most devout traditionalist will concede that spiritual power was never meant to replace human effort. It was meant to walk beside it.

A community can hold strong belief and still fall to kidnappers if its security and leadership are weak, in the same way a community with strong faith still suffers armed robbers if nobody keeps watch.

Tradition, Christianity and Islam agree on this, each in its own language. The divine, the gods, and the ancestors are said to help those who first help themselves, through unity, vigilance and a government doing its job.

So no, the gods do not ignore kidnapping. Stopping organised crime was simply never one masquerade’s personal assignment.

What happened to that young lady shows what happens when a personal boundary is crossed with contempt.

What happened to those schoolchildren shows what happens when a whole community’s duty to protect its own goes undone. Both wound us.

Neither is the other’s fault to carry. And that question, asked honestly, belongs at the door of every religious institution in this country, not tradition alone.

It should be noted, from a respected elder’s account, that the young woman at the centre of this story is alive, not deceased as earlier feared.

That is worth being grateful for. She will, however, carry the consequences for life, standing as a lasting example to those who mistake tradition’s discretion for tradition’s weakness.