A video circulating online shows a group of women angrily confronting a man they say lived among them in their compound presenting as a woman, only for them to later discover he was not.
What the Video Shows
In the video, the women say the man had dressed and groomed himself, down to fixing his nails, in a way that led them to believe he was a fellow woman in their compound. According to their account, this meant they had, on multiple occasions, appeared undressed in his presence, believing they were simply in the company of another woman, before eventually realising he was a man. The exact location of the compound and whether the matter has been formally reported to the police have not been independently confirmed beyond what is shown in the clip.
A Familiar, Troubling Pattern
Cases of men disguising themselves as women to gain access to spaces or moments meant for women only have surfaced repeatedly in Nigeria. In Kano in 2024, a 35-year-old man, Muhammad Munzali, was arrested by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps after he was caught sneaking into a female university hostel dressed as a woman. A similar case in Zamfara State saw a 15-year-old boy arrested after disguising himself in a wrapper, hijab, and headscarf to sneak into a female college hostel, where he was reportedly caught watching students bathing before other students identified him and handed him over to security. In 2025, a man was filmed being chased by security after he was accused of dressing as a woman to enter a female hostel at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University in Niger State. Other cases have involved men disguising as women to be hired as nannies or house help, only to be exposed later by the families or communities they had deceived.
How the Deception Works
In cases like these, disguise as a woman is typically used as a way to bypass the social boundaries that would otherwise keep a man out of spaces where women expect privacy — hostels, changing areas, or, as in this case, the shared intimacy of compound life among women who believed they were among their own. Because suspicion is naturally lower toward someone presumed to be a woman in a female-only or female-majority space, the deception can go undetected for a long time before something exposes it.
The Toll It Takes
For the women involved, discovering that someone they trusted and were physically vulnerable around was not who they believed causes a serious breach of trust and safety, beyond the discomfort of learning they had been watched without their knowledge or consent. Cases like this can also make women more guarded even around other women in shared living spaces, eroding the sense of communal trust that compound and hostel living often depends on.
Steps Worth Taking
Community and hostel administrators are increasingly being urged to enforce basic identity verification for anyone new to a shared residential space, particularly female-designated ones, and to take early reports of suspicious behaviour seriously rather than dismissing them. Where deception has enabled someone to witness others undressed without consent, legal experts note that this can amount to a criminal offence depending on the circumstances, and affected persons are encouraged to report the matter to the police rather than resolve it only through public confrontation.
Our Take
What makes this story unsettling isn’t really the disguise itself, it’s the betrayal of a very specific kind of trust — the unguarded comfort women extend to who they believe are fellow women in shared, private spaces. We think incidents like this are a reminder that beyond going viral and being publicly confronted, cases involving non-consensual exposure like this deserve to be taken to the appropriate authorities, so the matter doesn’t end at outrage online.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
