From social media campaigns to legal battles to protests against police brutality, the year has been one of increased visibility, and resistance.
In Nigeria, there is a very significant endeavour to keep queer people underground, to keep us out of sight and out of earshot. The social changes and contributions to the culture that we make are swept under the rug. We are never even acknowledged unless it is to be demonized and this only serves to preserve queerphobic oppression because it is this forced erasure that enables society to keep insisting that queerness does not exist in Nigeria, or that if it does, it is un-Nigerian.
This year so much has happened in the world. 2020 has been such a long and catastrophic year in so many ways. But despite that, queer Nigerians have been increasingly visible in our call for justice, and for an end to queerphobic attitudes. We have been at the forefront of multiple campaigns to break Nigeria from its violence and usher in a safer and more just society. Here are a few of the key moments in 2020.
The #EndHomophobiaInNigeria Campaign
When news of a gay man being killed in Nanka, by men who lured him there to extort him, surfaced on social media, it triggered public outrage from the queer community. Hate crimes are so common to the collective queer Nigerian experience that that death and the circumstances surrounding it was too familiar. It is a situation so many have faced and only barely escaped. There was an outpouring of grief for the queer man who had been murdered. And from that grief, the #EndHomophobiaInNigeria campaign was born. It was a sustained social media campaign that broke down the barricades around queer pain in mainstream social media spaces. Queer Nigerians utilized the hashtag to talk about the violence they have faced in their own lives because of their sexual and/or gender identity and to remember all the other queer people who died as a result of this violence. They also used the hashtag to call for the repeal of discriminatory laws that exist against queer people in Nigeria.
Matthew @Blaise_21 talks about the events that led up to him and three others starting the #EndHomophobiaInNigeria hashtag.
Have you watched the latest episode of untold facts ‘Using social media to affirm identity’ yet?
Watch it now on YouTube at https://t.co/wf88h15yGd pic.twitter.com/73O6uPRnbR
— The Initiative for Equal Rights (@TIERsNigeria) December 15, 2020
Tragedies like that are after all, so common because of the normalization of violence against queer people by Nigerian laws that serve to dehumanize and other us. The campaign expanded the conversation and shirked silence, as queer people all over the country used the hashtag to call for an end to these brutal laws. There had never been such a sustained queer campaign of that magnitude before in Nigeria. The hashtag stayed at number one for days, signifying that 2020 would be a year of ever-increasing visibility for the queer community as we fight to organize for safety.
Simi’s Apology
It has also been a year of accountability. A year of challenging homophobia even if it comes from one of the most mainstream media spaces. What led to the Simi apology was perhaps an example of how effectively the Nigerian queer community used social media in combating a lot of the harmful narratives surrounding queerness.
Popular musician, Simi, had earlier in the year questioned the validity of homosexuality as a sexual orientation saying, “They (the queer community) say they’re born that way, but I haven’t seen any biological proof.”
She made these comments on her YouTube show, Stoopid Sessions. It generated a lot of backlash from the queer community, but more importantly, sparked an important conversation on what culpability public figures had for promoting bigotry and intolerance. Eventually, in August, Simi issued an apology, saying she had listened and learned and that she was sorry. She explained that learning about the multiple violent crimes against queer people is what lead to the change of heart.
While the apology was a welcome development, it was not generally accepted. Because it should not take the death and brutalization of queer people to see the validity of our humanity. Also, because her husband, Adekunle Gold, was featured on the cover of QUAZAR magazine, a queer magazine. The backlash that trailed her apology led the magazine to cancel the cover.
Conversations like these seem so common now but only because we have refused to hold on to silence. It used to be that queerphobia from mainstream spaces got so little pushback that the peddlers of these violent narratives did not see it necessary to interrogate their position, let alone change it. Queer Nigerians have really utilized social media to challenge the demonization of queer identities, despite the social and legal costs that normally come with openly challenging queerphobia in Nigeria.
Ìfé and Defiance
This year also saw an explosion of media representation. In literature, film, and other media sources. One of the major ones are Ìfé, a movie about queer love in Nigeria, and Defiance, a trailblazing documentary about young queer people taking up space even in the face of violence.
It was not easy. Ìfé faced a lot of hurdles, with the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) trying to keep it from being released in Nigeria and threatening the producers of the film. Defiance likewise took a lot of effort, having to organize a documentary in Lagos, in a climate where such media projects could face legal retaliation.
It is so important that stories like these are being told because one of the pillars of queer oppression in Nigeria is the demonization of queer people in popular Nigerian media.
It is wonderful how much space queer people are taking in media. There is still a long way to go to achieve just representation, but it is nevertheless a significant victory to see authentic queer stories being platformed.
The Egbeda 57
In August 2018, in what would come to be the most high-profile arrests since after the SSMPA was passed, 57 men and over two dozen women were arrested in Egbeda, Lagos, at a birthday party. The arrests were part of a coordinated push by the government to whip up a mass frenzy over homosexuality. The women could leave while the men were detained. They were saddled with trumped-up charges including drug possession, cultism, and of course, holding a homosexual gathering. The Lagos State Commissioner for Police, Imohimi Edgal, made a spectacle of it, hosting a press conference where he paraded the detained men as guilty of these charges despite their constitutionally guaranteed right to innocence until proven guilty.
However, in court, they had nothing to back up the charges.
Charges were first filed in magistrate court, setting up a long two-year trial that would go on to traumatize these men who were turned into scapegoats in the government’s quest to ramp up queerphobic sentiments and lay claim to popularity.
There were five different hearings, over the span of more than a year. In the first hearing, the State prosecutors asked that they be given more time to gather evidence, which at the time, they did not have. They also failed to provide any material witnesses. After the fourth magistrate hearing in October 2019, the men found out they had also been charged in Federal court, this time for “…. public show of same-sex amorous relationships with each other in hidden places within said Kelly Ann hotel…”
And so, the federal trials also began.
The magistrate judge eventually struck out the case there, citing a lack of jurisdiction. At this time, there had already been seven (7) federal hearings. There would be 10 in total, culminating in the federal court also striking out the case, this time for lack of sufficient evidence.
It was not an acquittal despite the prosecution’s lack of evidence or witnesses. The Nigerian legal system has never been one to stand up for common people who do not have the privilege of wealth and connection. But it was still a victory, in its own way. All 57 of the men avoided incarceration, which is what the state was desperately hoping to achieve.
The trial had so many consequences on the victims. Loss of income, housing, financial support, family, etc. But in the end, it highlighted the resolve of the queer community to fight state violence, from the legal defence that was undertaken by The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs) to the #AquitThe57 social media campaign that was launched to mark the two-year point of their arrest and prosecution, a campaign that was instrumental in pressuring the federal court to schedule the 10th hearing where it struck out the case. It was a test of community and though the results were short of an acquittal, it was still a major win.
The #QueerNigerianLivesMatter Protests
October saw an eruption of nationwide protests against the Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS), and police brutality. Queer people were instrumental, not only in championing the call to abolish SARS but also for an end to police brutality. Queer people in Enugu, Abuja, Lagos, Kano, and so many other cities around the country, took to the streets to lend a voice to the ways in which the Nigerian police has been an organization of terror on the queer community, and this was despite significant push back from cisgender-heterosexual protesters who wanted to colonize the fight against police brutality and make it just about themselves.
Queer protesters who had queer specific messages on their placards were targeted in the protests, threatened, physically and verbally assaulted, and many were kicked out of the protests they were marching with. And yet, we continued to protest.
Queer Nigerians have always been at the receiving end of police violence, extortion, profiling, torture, etc, and the #EndSARS protests saw that pour out into the streets, as we refused to cede space and place the safety of our communities in the back burner.
TIERs 2020 Human Rights Violations Report
The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs), released its annual report on human rights violations in Nigeria. The report that was launched on the day of their annual symposium, is an unprecedented effort at properly documenting violence against queer people all around Nigeria.
The report had a lot of insights into the nature of violence queer people faced in Nigeria, and from whom. For instance, it found that invasion of privacy, arbitrary arrests and unlawful detention were the most common cases of rights violations perpetrated by state actors whereas blackmail, extortion, assault and battery, were the most common types of violations perpetrated by non-state actors.
The report also puts in perspective some linkages between state violence and violence from non-state actors. States that reported higher numbers of state perpetrated violence, such as Lagos, Enugu and Benin, also reported high occurrence of violations by non-state actors. It is not clear how much of this is attributable to difficulty in gathering this data given the legal peculiarities in the country, but there are many cases where both state and non-state actors are involved in the same violation.
It is a very important act of documentation. And documenting marginalization and discrimination is a necessary step in dismantling it. Get the full report here.
***
These are all important achievements, secured in the period of one year, in one of the most violent, anti-queer countries on the continent, and indeed the world. There are so many unfavourable conditions that serve as stumbling blocks to the important work queer people are advancing. Conditions like the weaponization of poverty, incarceration, police and mob violence, a complicit mainstream media, as well as a neo-fascist government and ultra-fundamentalist religious establishments intent on the demonization of our identities.
These are the conditions under which queer people are navigating existence and community safety. And it is important to take stock of this, however little it may seem. Not only does it show a resolute commitment to a better society, but it signifies how much is possible moving forward. This year was only the beginning, and the fight for justice will only get bigger from here, centring the most vulnerable – the poor, the houseless, the disabled, disadvantaged by an ableist society, the uneducated, etc. Our fights will have to centre them as we struggle to break down all the harmful queerphobic institutions set up to not only keep queer people out but to make it unsafe for us to even complain about this exclusion.
We will only grow more resolute in the struggle, and determination to see a just society that we can all be proud of. And so, we take stock, and we celebrate the little victories. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
And we will win.
This piece was written by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu. He is an openly gay Biologist, writer, and Queer Liberation activist who lives in Enugu, Nigeria. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance, and liberation and has appeared in The Enkare Review, The Rustin Times, Gertrude, Bakwa, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. He is the founder of the Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation (QUEST), a radical queer collective organizing for queer liberation in Nigeria.
