“The Stage Is My Shrine”: How Real Warri Pikin Navigates Sexist Attack in Nigeria Public Sphere

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Nigerian comedian Anita Asuoha, popularly known as Real Warri Pikin, spent the days after winning Best Stand-Up Comedian at the 2026 AFRIMMA Awards defending a stage moment that was nothing unusual, except that it happened to her.

The incident occurred on September 12 at the AFRIMMA festival in Dallas, Texas, hours after Real Warri Pikin won the award. During singer Timaya’s performance of his hit song “Ukwu,” he called for a woman to join him on stage, a routine he performs regularly, pulling women from the crowd or backstage and lifting them as part of the act. It has misfired before: at the Gbaramatu Christmas Carnival in Delta State in December 2025, Timaya lost his balance and fell while attempting the same stunt with a different woman. 

This time, Real Warri Pikin, who was backstage after her win, went up. Footage shows her initially resisting as Timaya prepared to lift her, saying no and pleading with him, before he told her, “You came outside. Don’t spoil my performance,” and lifted her anyway.

The clip went viral. But where Timaya’s routine has generated attention before as an entertainment moment, this time the criticism turned entirely on Real Warri Pikin’s marital status. Social media users questioned the appropriateness of the interaction because she is married, not because of the stunt itself, which Timaya has performed with numerous other women without comparable backlash.

An Apology for Something She Didn’t Choose

On September 13, Real Warri Pikin posted a selfie-style Instagram video captioned “Abeg make Una nor Vex,” in which she took “full responsibility” for the moment and pleaded with critics to ease up. “Area, abeg make una no vex for me. I take full responsibility, make una forgive me,” she said. 

Real Warri Pikin referred to her harshest critics as her “online in-laws,” noting that some had told her to leave her marriage entirely over the incident. Notably, at no point did her husband, Ikechukwu Asuoha, whom she has been married to since 2013 and with whom she shares three children, issue any public statement about the incident. The entire premise of the backlash, that she had wronged her husband, rested on speculation about his feelings that he himself never confirmed to the public. 

A Man Steps In to Defend a Husband Who Never Complained

Rather than settle the matter, Real Warri Pikin’s apology drew further pressure, this time from a third party inserting himself into her marriage. Social media personality Emmanuel Obruste, known as GehGeh, publicly gave her a 24-hour ultimatum to delete the subsequent video and apologise again. 

Obruste framed her response as “a direct attack on the ego of your husband,” despite the husband in question never having made any public complaint himself. The demand illustrates a familiar pattern: a woman’s body and choices become a matter for men who are not her husband to adjudicate on her husband’s behalf, regardless of whether he asked for that defence. He further added that if her husband won’t speak, he will speak for him. 

“The Stage Is My Shrine”

By September 19, Real Warri Pikin had abandoned the apologetic tone entirely. In a new video, she rejected the backlash outright: “To all the angry birds, I did what I did with my full chest, and I will do it over and over again. I’m an entertainer, and the stage is my shrine,” she said.

She also pointed out that critics had questioned why she continued posting content as though nothing happened, and why her husband still picked her up from the airport as normal. 

This shift from contrition to defiance marks a rare instance of a Nigerian woman in the public eye publicly retracting an apology extracted under pressure for what any adult should have the freedom to do.