When Tradition Becomes A Weapon: Nigeria Must Draw The Line Now -By Isaac Asabor

What happened to Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki in Benin City yesterday being the last Sunday of the year should unsettle anyone who still believes Nigeria is governed by law rather than by mob instincts wrapped in culture. A man was publicly beaten, paraded, and humiliated on the claim that he violated the “tradition of the land.” No court. No due process. No restraint. Just punishment by spectacle. That alone should force an uncomfortable national conversation we have postponed for too long: where does tradition end, and where must the law begin? The foregoing question is what not a few Nigerians keep dodging, and every time they dodge the question, barbarity finds fresh oxygen.

Across the country, especially in cosmopolitan cities that are home to Nigerians of different ethnicities and beliefs, we continue to tolerate traditional practices that openly collide with constitutional rights. In the South West, the periodic enforcement of Oro rites, where movement is restricted and threats are issued to those who “defy” tradition, has become a recurring source of fear, tension, and silence. In parts of the South South and South East, communal enforcement of customs still includes public shaming, violent punishment, and extra-legal sanctions. The pattern is the same: tradition is invoked, the law steps aside, and citizens are left exposed.

Only recently, in a case that quietly but powerfully challenged the myth of cultural immunity, a masquerade was arraigned in a Nigerian court for disorderly and violent conduct, still adorned in its full traditional costume. The image was striking: a symbol long treated as untouchable standing before a magistrate, not as a spirit beyond the law but as a citizen answerable to it. The charges stemmed from violent disruptions and public intimidation linked to the masquerade’s outing, and the court made a simple but radical point, ruling that tradition does not confer a license to terrorize. That moment mattered because it punctured the long-held assumption that cultural symbols cannot be questioned, arrested, or tried. It proved that when the state chooses to act, even the most revered traditions can be brought within the bounds of law without culture collapsing.

Let us be blunt. Culture does not outrank citizenship. Tradition does not supersede the Constitution. Any society that allows customs to override the rule of law is not preserving heritage; it is legalizing abuse.

Nigeria is not a village-state. It is a modern republic with a written Constitution that guarantees dignity of the human person, freedom of movement, and protection from degrading treatment. Those guarantees are not suspended because a group claims ancestral authority. Once physical harm, coercion, or public humiliation enters the picture, tradition has crossed into criminality. There should be no ambiguity about this.

The problem is not that Nigeria has traditions. Every society does. The problem is that the Nigerian state has refused to set hard boundaries. Governments, federal, state, and local, have consistently taken the coward’s route: looking away, issuing vague statements about “respecting culture,” or hiding behind political convenience. This silence is not neutral. It is endorsement.

When a man can be assaulted in public because elders say he offended tradition, the message is clear: your safety depends not on your rights, but on your standing within a cultural hierarchy. That is dangerous. It tells minorities, visitors, women, dissenters, and non-indigenes that the law may not protect them when it matters most.

Defenders of these practices often argue that tradition maintains order. That is false. Order enforced by fear is not order; it is intimidation. Real order comes from laws that are predictable, impartial, and enforceable. Tradition, by contrast, is fluid, selectively applied, and often weaponized by those with power within the community. Today it is used against an alleged offender; tomorrow it will be used to silence critics, settle scores, or assert dominance.

There is also a hard truth Nigeria must confront: many of these practices survive not because they are sacred, but because the state has failed. Where policing is weak, justice is slow, and courts are inaccessible, communities fall back on self-help. But self-help justice quickly mutates into collective violence. The solution is not to romanticize it, but to replace it with functioning institutions.

Connoisseurs of tradition who are reading may be wondering why this writer is sounding antagonistic to tradition, but they should know that we are in the 21st century. They should understand that the public beating, parading, and humiliation of Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki in Benin City on Sunday is enough for one to be antagonistic. I think connoisseurs of tradition should permanently eschew the erroneous thinking that “tradition” is always benign. What played out was not cultural correction; it was raw power, enforced through violence and spectacle. And if this can happen to a man of his background, profile, and social standing, then the ordinary Nigerian on the street has absolutely no protection.

So, this is where the conversation becomes unavoidable. Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki is not a faceless citizen. He is educated, accomplished, and visible. A chief executive, a professional, a man with social capital and access. In a country obsessed with titles, class, and connections, he is precisely the kind of person many assume is insulated from arbitrary abuse. Yet he was dragged into public disgrace, beaten, and stripped of dignity on the grounds that he violated the “tradition of the land.”

Pause there. If someone like Obaseki can be reduced to a public spectacle without a court order, without a police process, without a single constitutional safeguard kicking in, then the question is no longer academic: what chance does the ordinary man have? The roadside trader. The tenant. The non-indigene. The woman married into a community. The youth with no surname to protect him. If tradition can swallow Obaseki whole, it will not hesitate to devour those with no voice. This is why the defense of such acts as “customary enforcement” is not just dishonest; it is dangerous.

Nigeria keeps telling itself that tradition is under threat, that modern law is eroding cultural identity. That is a convenient lie. What is under threat is not culture, but unchecked authority. What some people are fighting to preserve is not heritage, but the right to punish without accountability.

So what must be done? First, governments must publicly and unequivocally state that no tradition authorizes physical harm, public humiliation, or restriction of fundamental rights. Not in press statements full of diplomatic fluff, but in clear policy backed by enforcement.

Second, state laws must be harmonized with the Constitution to explicitly criminalize violent traditional enforcement. Where loopholes exist, they should be closed. Where laws already exist, they should be applied, without negotiating with “custodians of culture.”

Third, law enforcement must stop treating these incidents as “community matters.” Assault is assault. Unlawful detention is unlawful detention. It does not become cultural because it is done collectively or in the name of ancestors.

Fourth, traditional institutions themselves must be redefined within the limits of modern governance. They can mediate, advise, and preserve heritage. They cannot punish, terrorize, or replace courts. Any traditional authority that crosses that line should face legal consequences, not deference.

Finally, Nigerians must stop confusing respect for culture with submission to abuse. Cultures evolve or they die. Those that survive are the ones that adapt to modern values of human dignity, pluralism, and the rule of law.

The humiliation of Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom. And unless Nigeria draws a firm, unmistakable line between tradition and law, yesterday’s spectacle will become tomorrow’s norm.

A 21st-century nation cannot keep excusing medieval punishments. If we fail to choose the law now, we are choosing chaos, one “traditional” beating at a time.