The Controversial hit series — Sex Education — just released the third season after what seemed like 20 months of Celibacy. The Netflix original written by Laurie Nunn has been, more or less, a handbook to young adults navigating and exploring their sexual lives and sexual identities. So far, it has featured a very inclusive, learning and enabling environment for everyone that has struggled with identity, sexuality and relationships. Focused on being an empowering platform, the TV series which started off as socially awkward has open and led conversations about sex and everything in between that society wasn’t ready to have, and we have grown into it.
Season three (3) of Sex Education kicked off with what seemed like a 3mins NSFW scenery that featured over fifteen (15) diverse approaches to eff, exploring pleasures, sexualities, fantasies and kinks. Albeit lots of hookups and get downs, this season wasn’t short of breakups, relationship faux pas, and sexual quandaries. One of our favourites of these quandaries, was Eric’s (Played by Ncuti Gatwa), Adams’ (Played by Connor Swindells) and Oba’s (Played by Jerry Iwu) situationship. Favourite, because it featured the underground queer scene in Lagos, Nigeria.
Africa is still far back in demarginalizing and accepting her own LGBTQIA+ people and identifying as a continent that totally celebrates fundamental rights and freedoms without repression or muffling of any kind. Nigeria is even all the more behind, with her rigid conservatism that hasn’t ushered in growth/development of any sort. This motherland criminalizes her children for having “carnal knowledge” against the order of nature, gross indecency between men, the civil union between men or women, aiding, abetting, administering or witnessing the solemnization of same-sex union or the support of LGBTQIA+ individuals/organisations with a penalty of 10 years imprisonment, and criminalising intimacy between men and women, which is further subjected to the extreme sharia law in 12 Northern states.
This country has had a long history of discrimination, enforcement, persecution, uncertainty and even confusion when it came to her standpoint around issues of the queer community. In 2013, policemen entrapped a gay man after tricking his partner into meeting at a rendezvous, and also arrested both of them at gunpoint. Both were charged under the SSMP Bill even though it had not been signed into law. They were detained for two days and released after paying a bribe. In 2014, Ifeanyi Orazulike, a clinic operator for HIV, MSM and trans women in Abuja, told the International AIDS Conference of the impact Nigeria’s novel SSMP law was having on HIV treatment: “We used to have about 60 people a month; post-law it is down to about 10 to 15 people… For fear of going to prison, people preferred to stay at home on their sickbed” he narrated. In May 2015, A telephone poll of about 1,000 Nigerians found that 87% of respondents support the SSMPA and only 11% would be willing to accept a family member if they were lesbian, gay or bisexual. The remaining 2% was indifferent about it. 2016/17 also featured several cases where ignorant individuals expressed hate, organised prorests, beat and/or extorted anyone who dared to have a different sexual orientation.
In 2018, Babatunde Fashola, one of Nigeria’s most prominent officials and former governor of Lagos state, said that “he does not know that gay people are persecuted in Lagos state”. He made that responding comment to a question about his stand to homosexuality and the LGBT condition in Lagos state on the Commonwealth Peoples Forum at the Commonwealth Head of Governments Meeting 2018 In London. The SSMPA have constantly, broken the wind beneath the country’s wings to make an early departure from inequality and soar in love, inclusivity and self-discovery.
Journeying into self-discovery, Eric has without question been one of the most honest and open characters on the show when it comes to being vocal about his wants and desires, and that applies to the vividly bright, loud palettes and bold fabric patterns in his wardrobe. While Adam, on the other hand, has had the most challenge in expressing himself, a trait that he however explores during preparation for sex, in his relationship with Eric. He did, overall, make tentative steps towards Eric’s ideal of freedom in his self-expression.
While Eric travelled along the road of self-discovery at sound speed, he also had to visit his family in Nigeria for a wedding. Preparing to go to the more repressive environment, he was cautioned not to wear his sexuality overtly by his mum because of the country’s Anti-gay law. Surprisingly, but for queer Nigerian viewers, not so surprisingly, Eric finds a queer man in Lagos – Oba. Oba was the event’s photographer who wasn’t going to get paid for his artistic work because he’s a friend of the groom – no surprise there. The next instalment spent a significant part of his time with Eric when he got hinted by his gaydar about Eric’s situation. Oba convinced Eric and took him on a trip to see what it’s like to be gay in an illiberal place like Nigeria. Underground, he was met by really lovely individuals who out of fear of being kicked out, hurt, or even worse, killed, have to hide expressing their true selves and loving whom they wanted. They danced, had a moment, and shared a kiss. Alas, Eric had an epiphany!
Queer folks in Africa remain vulnerable to being evicted from their homes, kicked out of public businesses, denied health care, denied government services, arrested or even killed. Simply because of who they are. – Elvis Osifo for ModaCulture.
In Nigeria, it’s not any easier. As Africa’s most populous country, its impact cores through the very framework of love, acceptance and equality on a continental level. But as an act of self-preservation, Queer individuals have learnt to out-smart the institutions that goads violence against members of the community, and still found ways to be expressive and vivid, graphic even. “I just feel like I’m ready fly and you’re just learning to walk,” Eric said to Adam after he confessed to kissing Oba in Nigeria. Their relationship was sort of put through the wringer this season, and eventually, Eric decided that he had to walk away. It was an act of self-preservation, and a move from Netflix to people doing undoubtedly, what’s right for them – prioritising their own mental health, and learning to understand and truly love and accept themselves, and probably even nuanced hints to the Nigeria queer community. Eric had a taste of the underground and “wanted to Fly.”
Sex Education, in their third season, recreated the one thing Queer Nigerians have been saying all along — we have always been ready to fly.
Elvis Osifo is a culture and lifestyle Editor, proficient in investigative journalism and curating relevant as well as engaging web contents. He is opportune to use his platform as an editor, writer and contributor to a number of publications as a voice of love, acceptance and inclusivity in Africa, and to Africans
