Comedienne and actress Tomama, popularly known as Dat Warri Girl, has fired back at people who brand unexplained female wealth as prostitution, insisting that some women are involved in far heavier crimes and still get reduced to one tired stereotype.
The skit maker and content creator spoke in a video now circulating after content creator Kemi Ikuseedun, also known as Mummy Wa, claimed on a podcast that a lot of women in entertainment sleep with men for money.
Read “A Lot of Women in Entertainment Are Prostitutes!” — Mummy Wa
Tomama’s reply did not defend every woman with flashy cash. She argued that the public is too lazy to imagine women as serious criminals.
“Once people can’t figure out a woman’s source of income, some of you just tag her a prostitute. You guys don’t respect women in crime at all. They’re involved in a lot of things that’ll shock you. They’re do money laundering, push drugs, pimping, fraud, azaman, and kidnapping,” she said.
She painted a picture of fronts that look ordinary on the surface.
“Haven’t you seen some big shops in Lekki where they make no sales yet stay open. They use that shop for money laundering. Some kidnap victims are lured in with women. Women own drug cartels.”
Tomama said the prostitution tag is often the lighter story, which is why some women accept it.
“When you call these kinds of women prostitutes, they readily accept because it pales next to what they’re actually involved in. See the woman who was exploiting her own daughter. Women commit serious crimes, stop underestimating them.”
Tomama, whose real name is Oluwatoyin Albert, built her brand on Warri-accent comedy, acting and on-air work. The comments under the circulating video split in two. Some users said society underestimates women and that prostitution is the easiest insult. Others treated Tomama’s list as proof that women can be just as calculating as men.
What Tomama kept returning to was respect of a grim kind. In her telling, calling every mysteriously rich woman a prostitute is not only sloppy. It also gives cover to people she believes are running criminal organizations.
She closed the thought with a jab at gendered credit.
“It must feel good to be a man because you just keep getting undue credit.”