A film-maker has been arrested for allegedly recording a porn movie at the Osun-Osogbo scared grove in western Nigeria, police say.
The Osun-Osogbho sacred grove, home to Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility, is a Unesco world heritage site in a forest on the outskirts of Osun state.
Police said the film-maker, Tobiloba Jolaosho, popularly known as King Tblak HOC, was arrested for allegedly recording a “sex movie” in the forest.
Neither he nor his lawyers have commented.
Mr Jolaosho is a popular porn movie producer with a huge following, and snippets of the video, which showed him dressed in the white robe of adherents of the Osun deity, were posted on his website and social media accounts.
It is not clear when the recording was done and how he entered the forest, which can be accessed from many routes.
Police spokesman Opalola Yemisi, told BBC Yoruba’s Busayo James-Olufade that the movie producer will be arraigned in court once investigations were over, as his conduct “could have breached public peace”.
A follower of the deity, Yemi Elebuibon, who is known as the Araba of Osogbo, said Mr Jolaosho had desecrated the grove, which was a sacred land where worshipers from Nigeria and elsewhere offer prayers and sacrifices to the Osun goddess.
“The traditional worshipers in charge of the grove will decide on what punishment to mete out to him, after the police concludes its investigation,” Mr Elebuibon said.
Declared a World Heritage Site in 2003, Unesco describes the grove, as “one of the last remnants of primary high forest” in southern Nigeria and “as the abode of the goddess of fertility Osun, one of the pantheon of Yoruba gods”.
The Osun goddess, according to Yoruba mythology, was one of the many wives of Sango, a powerful deity in Yorubaland.
