By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – FOLLOWING the assault on women and girls during the Ozoro Festival in Ozoro, the headquarters of Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State, a gender-based Nongovernmental organization, Gender Mobile Initiative, GMI, Monday, demanded urgent audit of traditional and cultural practices in the country.

GMI expressed displeasure and condemned the violation of women and girls during the Ozoro festival, therefore, made the call to examine indecent cultural practices under the guise of festival.

Adding that it gathered that narratives about the festival that there has been age-long practices that women were singled out and shamed publicly in a dehumanizing way, particularly those fingered to be infertile.

According to GMI, such practices include acts like pouring sand on affected women, which it described as demeaning and inconsistent with human dignity, regardless of their traditional or ritual significance.

The organisation also pointed out the Ozoro incidence is just one among many, where such practices are found in communities with similar traditions, which undermine the rights of women and girls.

Meanwhile, the Team Lead of GMI, Omowunmi Ogunrotimi, maintained that it is imperative to have deep and critical assessment of such inhuman cultural norms that are dangerous to lives of the victims.

She said: “We cannot continue to excuse harmful practices under the guise of culture. Where traditions promote stigma, humiliation, or violence against women, they must be questioned and reformed.

“Culture is a people’s way of life, but it should not come at the expense of dignity, safety and humanity.”

Speaking further, Ogunrotimi said culture should focus on values of dignity, equality and safety, but allowing dangerous norms to exist and practiced is pure injustice, and should be stamped out.

GMI added that practices that enable harm, exclusion or violence against women and girls, whether symbolic or physical, should not be shielded from scrutiny, which it called for a comprehensive cultural practices audit to identify and address harmful and discriminatory elements embedded in traditions.

It linked the reported incidents at the Ozoro festival to broader societal systems that normalise the policing of women’s bodies and reinforce harmful gender norms.

The organisation further noted that such concerns were not isolated to Delta State, but reflected wider patterns across communities where certain traditions continue to undermine the rights of women and girls.