I began to follow writer and activist Olutimehin Adegbeye on social media during the Aziz Ansari sexual assault allegation, precipitated by the website Babe.net. Someone had reposted her tweets about Ansari onto my timeline, and I thought them to be interesting and complex and refreshingly luminous. Olutimehin belongs to a visible pantheon of young feminists illuminating the Nigerian social media landscape with their thoughts and wisdom. Back to the Ansari scandal – I never knew Olutimehin had a #MeToo story of her own.

The timing seemed right. The literary world was having a #MeToo rumble: writer Zinzi Clemmons went on Twitter and accused celebrated Latinx and Pulitzer-winning writer Junot Díaz of forcibly kissing her, when she was a 26-year-old student. Naturally, Olutimehin had something to say, retweeting think pieces and framing them with extracted quotes. Last week, Olutimehin began revealing details of being sexually assaulted – the BBC had unintentionally interviewed her for a recent program about toxic/evolving masculinity and its impacts. What they hadn’t informed her was that popular TV host Andre Blaze Henshaw was also interviewed for the same slot.

Upon discovering this, and the accompanying trauma and pain rendered fresh, Olutimehin informed the BBC that Andre sexually assaulted her two years before. She asked quietly for the content of the interview to be edited or deleted, but they declined. As Olutimehin’s tweets took on a quietly raging quality, I had nothing but sincere sympathy. As usual, her story became sensationally hot fodder for parroting, traffic-driven media outlets. And Andre, ensconced in a sparkling career as television host, reacted to Olutimehin’s accusation on Twitter in the way all Nigerian men (popular or not) have been reacting since the #MeToo conversation started: denial.

I'm issuing a brief statement in light  of the allegations made against my person. 

The things being said about me, those that know me can attest are not the actions of the person they know as a friend, son, brother and father.

— Andre Blaze Henshaw (@AndreBlaze) May 5, 2018

To make themselves look guilty, they go to extremes like recruiting legal backup on the grounds of “defamation” of character. In Andre’s case, he made the WTF, self- referencing defence of being a “son,” “brother,” and “father.” Like, I want to insert LOL somewhere but this isn’t a chat room. Andre hasn’t tweeted since the 5th of May, so it’s safe to assume that he’s working with a legal counsel on releasing a statement. While we wait, it’s imperative that we take more than just a cursory look at Andre’s hosting gig on EbonyLife TV’s Men’s Corner, where he co-hosts with in-demand TV personality Ebuka Obi-Uchendu and Mazino.

Men’s Corner, the masculinity cult show on the moneyed EbonyLife TV, sweeps itself with the tide of Nigeria’s peak talk television. My piece on web talk series and their tired tropes is still very much insightful, but Men’s Corner is ingrained with its own peculiar problems. As a pop-cultural property, the show is modern enough to be consumed, with a topical menu that comprises of women, sex, relationships, sports and whatnot. Men’s Corner is an attitude, and the hosting trio of Andre, Ebuka and Mazino are full of it.

Its episode on feminism, discussed by three hosts who probably never researched the topic for personal enlightenment, was a study into faux wokeness. Transplanting that episode into the frameless spontaneity of your average beer parlour, and it becomes obvious that feminism was only a well-inserted TV bait, a we-have-exhausted-all-our-topics-so-what-do-we-talk-about-now? device.

Andre, though competent at steering Men’s Corner from opening to resolution, is the avatar of hypermasculinity. To an extent, he’s responsible for hemming the show with a masculine tone and flow – Ebuka may sound assertive, but Andre is the only voice we usually hear. Although I’m a man, I have never been interested in men’s talk shows because they are oft-designed not to challenge hegemonic masculinity. Can we have a show where its content is dedicated to the issues of workplace harassment on women? Can we have male hosts examine their privilege and complicity in rape culture? Can we have men explore nuanced sexuality without shame or judgement? Can we just have something fun yet subversive?

I thought not. Since the news of Andre’s sexual assault allegation broke, there hasn’t been a statement released from EbonyLife TV, and the respective social media accounts of Ebuka and Mazino seem to be existing in a different world. This is how powerful institutions, and equally powerful male celebrities in the media, protect abusers and rapists. E!’s Ryan Seacrest still continued his hosting gig in the current season of American Idol, despite his sexual abuse allegation which prompted E! to conduct an investigation and concluded finding “insufficient” evidence of wrongdoing.

The certitude of Andre as a Men’s Corner host being safe speaks to how we have continually failed to hold men accountable for their actions. For Olutimehin, she’s left with re-navigating her pain and ordeal, amid the voices that have tried to discredit her experience. Employing the ubiquity of the #TimesUp, #NoMore and #MeToo hashtags, Olutimehin is baring herself again, having narrated about her assault on Twitter in 2016. We didn’t listen then. #MeToo has pressurised the world into focus, and, for powerful men like Andre, we are now definitely watching.