On a recent episode of Fox drama Empire, one of the characters listed countries where you can be executed for being gay. Nigeria was the first one he named. At this point in the episode, I had to pause the episode and walk away for a minute. Homosexuality carries a lighter sentence in the part of the country where I live, with “offenders” only getting 14 years in prison, but in some parts of the country people convicted of “homosexual acts” can be put to death.
After the episode aired I saw someone tweet that they were proud of that. They were proud that our country punishes people so harshly for being themselves, even when they’re not hurting anyone else. I couldn’t deal with it. For one thing, I don’t believe in respecting opinions that disrespect other people’s existence. It’s a common refrain on social media but it’s so true. I can’t respect a system that thinks it’s appropriate to sentence someone to over a decade of jail time just for being in a relationship with someone of the same gender.
I don’t remember whether the person said it outright, but there was an implied “we don’t tolerate gay people in Africa”. Like homosexuality is something too foreign or too white for people in Nigeria. As if LGBT Nigerians are inherently less authentically Nigerian because of their sexuality. Colonialism left a lot of Africa in a pretty bad place and one major effect that we still see is that we have such a warped sense of our own history. There have always been gay men in Nigeria (the yan dauda). The Bunyoro people of Uganda traditionally had homosexual priests. In Burkina Faso, certain people traditionally believed that gay men were able to mediate between the human and spirit worlds.
So actually, to a large extent, homosexuality wasn’t the colonial import. Homophobia was. When the “it’s not part of our culture” defence falls through, “it’s against my religion” is usually the next defence for homophobic laws. People go from “that’s not natural” to “well…our religion teaches us to be against it, even if it is natural”. In Nigeria especially, a country where Christianity and Islam are roughly equally represented in the population, you’d think we’d have figured out how to practice tolerance at an institutional level.
I pointed out on Twitter that I wasn’t proud of our country’s laws with respect to homosexuality, and I’m actually ashamed of them. I immediately got called gay. If that was meant as a deterrent from speaking out it certainly failed. Proving or performing heterosexuality isn’t more important than making sure everyone gets treated fairly. I have Nigerian friends who aren’t straight and who came out because they’re in school outside the country. What happens when they go back to Nigeria? Do they have to hide their sexuality again? What about my non-Nigerian friends? Can they come visit my country? If my voice gets too loud, will I end up in jail? After all, “endorsing” homosexuality or being part of a “gay organization” is a crime too. I’d like to think no one’s going to come after me, and all my friends are going to be fine, but according to the letter of the law we could all be charged with crimes. Just for speaking and existing and resisting. And I don’t really know how to change that, but I know that talking about it is the first step. So I’m going to keep doing that. Hopefully people listen.
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