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| - An X user, @247IGBO, has posted a video showing a procession alongside a claim that a human head was being used by a popular Nigerian traditional ruler for ritual purposes in the viral clip.
The 36-second video shows the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, surrounded by a crowd at a traditional procession as he was seen pouring gin on a figurine head. The figurine was placed on a white cloth inside a small cart.
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The video was accompanied with a text that read thus:
“Only in Nigeria a known traditional ruler will be publicly performing ritual with Human head without being arrested, tried and imprisoned. I gave up.”
The post has garnered over 1.5 million views with 4,000 likes, more than 2,000 reposts and over 500 comments as of the February 2, 2025.
CLAIM
Video shows human head being used for ritual by a traditional ruler during procession.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING as the video shows the Obatala figurine during a Yoruba traditional festival.
The Obatala Festival is an annual cultural and spiritual celebration in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria, dedicated to Obatala, the Yoruba deity of wisdom, purity, and creation. Traditionally held in January every year, a month associated with Obatala in the Yoruba calendar, the festival serves as a significant event for devotees and cultural enthusiasts alike.
Obatala is often represented with terracotta or figurine and white attire, which symbolize purity, creation, and wisdom. Terracotta, being an earthen material, aligns with Obatala’s association with moulding humanity from clay, according to Yoruba mythology.
To verify the claim, our fact-checker carefully examined the video and detected a TikTok watermark. We traced the video to the TikTok platform and found several videos of the same visual from the just concluded Obatala festival in Ile-ife, Osun State. An example of one of them was tagged “Obatala festival Ile-ife”.
After several checks on the video especially the area showing the head, it clearly depicted a figurine and not a human head as claimed in the viral X post.
Further checks by our researcher on other platforms like YouTube with the key word “Obatala festival” showed multiple videos from the festival which clearly depicts the Obatala figurine.
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Also, another X user @omolisabi posted another short video of the figurine from this year’s Obatala festival, which shows the Obatala figurine clearly. Another YouTube video also showed the same figurine during the Obatala festival held last year.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows human head being used for ritual by a traditional ruler during procession is MISLEADING; the video shows the Obatala figurine on display during the Obatala festival, a popular traditional festival in Yoruba culture, celebrated globally.
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