Two Years After SSMPA, Nigeria LGBT are Feeling the Heat of Hate

Two years ago, on 7th January 2014, in the secret of the Nigerian presidential villa Aso Rock, President Goodluck Jonathan signed theSame Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2013. It was one of the most vicious and draconian pieces of legislation to come out of Nigeria and Africa in 2014.

I was at home when I got the call that the law has been signed. I felt sad and dejected when I heard the news.

Of course, this type of persecution is not new. Nigeria’s government’s victimization and criminalization of its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community dates back to the pre-colonial period when the British, in the glory of their empire, left the country with a “sodomy law.”

But the 2014 law took the persecution to a new level. For example, the gangs of homophobic Nigerians were given a legal status that backed their actions. Their boldness could be oiled by the blood of their victim.

The argument used by Jonathan and his people, most importantly his spokesperson Ruben Abati, to justify the new law was that Nigerians demanded it because “homosexuality is not part of our culture and our religion.”

They are right, that is how many feel. Around 87% of Nigerians agreed with this sentiment in the 2015 NOI-polls conducted by Bisi Alimi Foundation and The Initiative for Equal Rights.

Now two years later, life is harder than ever for LGBT people in Nigeria. Recently, 21 gay Nigerian students were arrested for “indulging in same-sex activities.” Most telling is the Initiative for Equal Right’s annual report, released in December on Human Rights Day. “Human Rights Violation based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Nigeria” was grim reading, and should melt even the hardest hearts of stone.

In 2015 alone, the report recorded 282 LGBT persons were violated in Nigeria. The three most common violations recorded were blackmail (54), battery/assault (37), and arbitrary arrests (27). This is an increase from 2014 report, which recorded 105 cases.

I am a gay Nigerian man and I keep thinking about the 282 people violated last year. Like them, my life is judged not on my potential to make Nigeria a better country, something I will be proud to do, but on my sexual partner.

Like the 282 people, I have to walk down the road watching my back for fear of being attacked, assaulted, or arrested by the police. I have to live my life learning how to “man up” because in the jungle of masculinity and heteronormativity that is the only way I can survive.

Like those 282, my promotion at work is dependent on my married life rather than my ability to do the job well. It seems that my only qualification to the status of “responsible human being” is showing my wife.

I am also reminded that the lived reality of the 282 cannot be understood just in figures, but also in how it changes their lives. How they — how we — must live life in fear, terror, shame, invincibility, pain and depression.

But still I have hope. While the road to liberation for LGBT people in Nigeria is a long, hard one, it is not an impossible one.

What I see is that the hate towards LGBT people in Nigeria is propelled by ignorance, fear, “politricking” and religious sensationalism. Most humans fear what they do not understand, while others try to understand, rationalized and make a decision. Unfortunately, the former holds sway in Nigeria and homosexuality is discussed within the framework of right and wrong, good and bad, human and subhuman and all entrenched on the borrowed culture of the Bible and Quran.

To eliminate ignorance and fear, it’s important for everyone to remember that LGBT people like me, like the 282, are people they know. We are all family members, relatives, friends and neighbors. We are people with feelings, aspirations, hopes and fears, just like anyone else. And we deserve respect and safety. Indeed, we are part of the “people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” that the constitution promised in 1999 to defend. We should have rights.

This is why Bisi Alimi Foundation and other LGBT groups in Nigeria are working so hard to create an Equal Nigeria, where all Nigerians, irrespective of tribe, gender, disability, class, sexual orientation and gender identity can be equal.

The next time you hear the number 282, don’t just see it as a figure, but view it as representative of 282 people who each might be someone you know: your best friend, your sister, your brother, your aunt, your uncle, your mother or your father.

See their humanity and choose to stand on the side of history that will one day make them equal to their heterosexual peers under the law.