Wasilat posted four words on TikTok from her room in Ibadan — “Ololu is Around” — hoping people would avoid one street. Days later she says men came for her, police locked her up, and she was taken to a shrine where her hair was shaved and goat blood was poured on her body. ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE examines in this report she alleges ₦400,000 was collected from her husband before she was let go. The article traces her story is about one post, one masquerade, and what happens when tradition, fear, and power meet a woman with a phone

It started with a window.
Wasilat was standing in a room she used to live in, somewhere in Ibadan. Outside, she could see Amotekun officers and other people moving in a small cluster. She didn’t think too much of it. She lifted her phone, recorded through the glass, and typed four words before she hit post: “Ololu is Around.”

She just wanted people to know. Don’t pass here. Take another road.

The video did what videos do in Ibadan. It moved. Fast.

Within hours, messages came in. “Delete it.” She did. But by then the screenshots had already left her phone. In this city, once something is on TikTok, it belongs to everybody.

Two days passed. Then the knock came.
Two men stood at her door. They were not smiling. They said she was the one behind the TikTok account. They shouted. Her family shouted back. Then police officers arrived. The men told her the Olubadan had ordered her arrest. If she didn’t follow them, she would be locked up.

She went.

That night she slept on a bench in a station. The next morning they said she had bail. She thought that meant home. It didn’t.

Instead, she says, they took her somewhere else. Her mother was told to go to the market. Buy a goat. Buy a razor blade.

“They put the goat on my head and took me to Ogun shrine,” Wasilat said later, her voice low in a video she recorded to tell her side.

“They ordered me to remove my clothes, and I obeyed because I had no choice.”

She stood there while her hair fell to the floor. She says she felt the cold of the blade and the eyes watching her. Then the goat was killed. The blood ran. And they poured it over her.

After, she was told to open her phone and go live. Say the words they gave her.

“They told me to lie that after seeing the Oloolu masquerade I became sick, and that the ritual was to cure me,” she said.

“Nothing was wrong with me. They forced me to say I was bleeding from my ears and my private parts. Those were all lies. I wasn’t even menstruating at the time.”

She read it because she was afraid not to.
The last thing, she alleges, was the money. Her husband’s phone rang. Negotiations happened. “They eventually collected ₦400,000 from my husband,” she said.

“My husband made the transfer. It was the Isese people that collected the money, not the police.”

Then she was allowed to leave.
Back on the streets of Ibadan, a different story was already running. People on WhatsApp and X were saying Wasilat had died after seeing Oloolu. The masquerade. The one with the big presence and the old rules. In Yoruba towns, Oloolu is not just costume and drums. It is history, authority, something you don’t joke with. To film it, to talk about it carelessly, can get you in trouble in some quarters.

But trouble and what happened to her are not the same thing.

Wasilat is alive. She made her own video to prove it. She spoke in Yoruba, and someone translated it. She said she only wanted to warn people. She deleted when she was asked. She spent a night in custody. She was shaved. She was bathed in blood. She was told what to say. And her family paid.

If you walk through Ibadan these days, you will feel two things at once. The weight of tradition, and the weight of hardship.

Food is not cheap. In June, the price of tomatoes, pepper, garri, yam flour and beans all went up again. The IMF says poverty is around 63% in Nigeria, and in late 2025 about 27 million people were facing food insecurity. For many families, ₦400,000 is not a fine. It is school fees. It is rent. It is medicine. When that kind of money is demanded to “end” a matter, people don’t ask questions. They pay.

That is why Wasilat’s story hit a nerve. Because it wasn’t just about a masquerade. It was about power. Who has it. Who uses it. And what happens to a woman with a phone in the middle.

On TikTok, the comments split. Some people said she disrespected Oloolu and should have known better. Others said no culture gives anyone the right to cut a woman’s hair by force and pour blood on her. The rumor that she had died only made people angrier.

Her lawyers, if she gets them, will ask simple questions. Who ordered the arrest? On what charge? Why was bail not followed by release? Who took her to the shrine? Who received that transfer? Money leaves a trail.

Human rights lawyers will point to the Constitution. Dignity. Fair hearing. Freedom from inhuman treatment. You cannot punish someone for a post outside a courtroom. You cannot collect money to close a case that was never in court.

Traditional leaders will have to answer too. Isese practitioners say their rites are voluntary. A sacrifice is for cleansing, for prayer, for peace. It is not for punishment. If people used the name of the shrine to frighten and to collect money, then the name itself is wounded.

And the police, and Amotekun, will have to explain their role. A security outfit is not a cultural court.

I keep thinking about the razor.
In many Yoruba homes, a woman’s hair is not just hair. When it is cut without her permission, it is a message. People see you and know something happened. It is shame made visible. Add the blood, and add being forced to say you were bleeding from places you weren’t, and you start to understand why Wasilat made that video with shaking hands.

She wasn’t asking for Oloolu to be banned. She wasn’t insulting the palace. She posted four words. She thought she was helping.

Ibadan is a city that holds both things: deep reverence and young people who film everything. The two will keep meeting. The question is how.

If we answer with fear, we will get more secret payments, more rumors, more women who learn to keep quiet even when they see something. If we answer with law, we can have a city where you can respect the masquerade and still say, “Don’t go that way today.”

There should be further investigation. Not a whispering one. A real one. The police in Oyo State should call the officers, call the men who came to her house, follow the bank transfer. The palace and community leaders should say clearly that no one should be arrested or fined outside due process. Women’s groups should stand with Wasilat so she doesn’t have to carry this alone.

Because right now, in homes across Nigeria, mothers are already making hard choices. Food or drugs. Transport or books. The last thing we need is to add: speak or be punished.

Wasilat ended her video by saying she is fine. But her voice was tired.

She didn’t die. She didn’t go mad. She posted, she was taken, she was shaved, she was filmed saying lies, and she came home.

That is the story.
And if a city cannot protect a woman for saying “Ololu is Around,” then the city is telling every other woman to keep quiet. And a quiet city is a city where things happen in the dark. Although, the traditions of a people must be respected.

Onwumere is Chairman Advocacy Network on Religious and Cultural Coexistence (ANORACC)