Before the Anti-Homosexuality Bill: The Historical Contours of LGBT Organizing in Nigeria Free

Abstract

Existing scholarship on the causes of homophobia in contemporary Nigeria and on the relationship between religion and homophobia in Africa tend to dismiss LGBT activism in Nigeria as a movement so small as to be almost nonexistent. We argue, however, that LGBT activism in Nigeria does exist, and that it has a history. And although religion has often been harnessed to serve homophobic policies, LGBT activists have also worked together with religious organizations to offer support to LGBT communities. Drawing on sources from Nigeria and the United States, this article traces the rough outlines of LGBT activism in Nigeria from the 1970s to the present. We explore Nigerian LGBT activists’ experiences over five decades in order to elucidate LGBT organizing in a West African context, paying special attention to the themes of invisibility and visibility, transnational organizing, and religion. The picture that emerges is one of interwoven activist networks that connect Nigerian activists not only to the West but also to activists in other African countries, including Ghana and South Africa. We see this article as a small contribution to the much larger project of writing the history of LGBT activism in Nigeria, a project that can and should be led by those better positioned to access and analyze the documents and memories necessary for this task.

Résumé

Les études actuelles sur les causes de l'homophobie au Nigéria contemporain et sur la relation entre religion et homophobie en Afrique tendent à rejeter l'activisme LGBT au Nigéria comme étant un mouvement si petit qu'il est presque inexistant. Nous soutenons, cependant, que l'activisme LGBT au Nigeria existe et qu'il a une histoire. Et bien que la religion ait souvent été exploitée pour servir des politiques homophobes, les militants LGBT ont également collaboré avec des organisations religieuses pour offrir un soutien aux communautés LGBT. S'appuyant sur des sources du Nigéria et des États-Unis, cet article retrace les grandes lignes de l'activisme LGBT au Nigéria des années 1970 à nos jours. Nous explorons les expériences des militants LGBT nigérians sur cinq décennies afin de mettre en lumière l'organisation LGBT dans un contexte ouest-africain, en accordant une attention particulière aux thèmes de l'invisibilité et de la visibilité, de l'organisation transnationale et de la religion. Le tableau qui émerge est celui de réseaux militants entrelacés qui relient les militants nigérians non seulement à l'Occident mais aussi aux militants d'autres pays africains, dont le Ghana et l'Afrique du Sud. Nous voyons cet article comme une petite contribution au projet beaucoup plus vaste qu'est celui d’écrire l'histoire de l'activisme LGBT au Nigeria, un projet qui peut et doit être mené par ceux qui sont mieux placés pour accéder et analyser les documents et les souvenirs nécessaires à cette tâche.

Introduction

In 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan signed the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, or the SSMPA, into law. This legislation reaffirmed the illegal status of same-sex sexual conduct, in addition to criminalizing same-sex weddings, LGBT organizations and social clubs, and support for same-sex relationships. Local activists and Western governments condemned the SSMPA for its wide-reaching and draconian nature: in Nigeria today it is illegal for any person, regardless of their sexual orientation, to engage in LGBT activism. As a result, LGBT activists in Nigeria keep a low profile in order to protect themselves from arrest and homophobic violence. Their relative invisibility makes it easy to overlook LGBT activism in the country today, and it renders the history of today's movements opaque.

The legal origins of the SSMPA can be traced back to British colonial rule. Chapter 21 of the Nigerian Criminal Code has criminalized same-sex sexual activity between men since the colonial period, and “carnal knowledge . . . against the order of nature” carries a federal penalty of fourteen years imprisonment. In Northern Nigeria, Muslims and those subject to the authority of Shari'a courts face the death penalty for homosexual activity. Individual states also have laws criminalizing the so-called practices of sodomy, buggery, lesbianism, gross indecency, and being an “incorrigible vagabond.” In some states, the criminal acts and their respective punishments are vague in their definition and application; in others, such as Borno State, the law is highly specific: An individual who “engages in sexual intercourse with another person of the same gender shall upon conviction be punished with death.”¹ It is in this challenging legal environment that LGBT activists in Nigeria operate, a situation made even more challenging by the broad support these laws receive from the public.

This article traces the rough outlines of LGBT activism in Nigeria from the 1970s to the present, drawing on sources from both Nigeria and the United States. In keeping with the terminology employed most frequently by the activists we study, this article will use the term “LGBT” (meaning “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender”) to refer to gender and sexual minorities in Nigeria.² Recent works on African sexualities by Rudolf Gaudio and in the edited volume Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship, and Activism argue for an Africa-centered approach to understanding sexuality on the continent, centering their analyses in local languages and cultures instead of attempting to apply Western concepts of gender and sexuality to an African context.³ We adopt this approach and apply it to our study of the history of LGBT activism. Therefore, although we investigate transnational connections between activists in Nigeria and the United States and Britain, we ground our analysis in Nigeria and trace the transnational connections outward. By piecing together what details we find about Nigeria-based LGBT activist organizations across five decades, we explore their goals and experiences, successes and failures, in order to elucidate LGBT organizing in a West African context. The picture that emerges is one of interwoven activist networks that connect Nigerian activists not only to the West but also to activists in other African countries as well, including Ghana and South Africa.

This research topic came about through discussions in our graduate seminar on gender and sexuality in African history, taught by Dr. Nwando Achebe at Michigan State University. In reading and discussing the existing scholarship on African sexualities, we observed that the histories of those who have organized against homophobia in West Africa have been largely ignored in the historiography of African sexualities, with the vast majority of the literature focusing on Southern Africa. These omissions could be the result of seeking to read activist strategies through a Western lens, which tends to recognize only overt forms of agency. Therefore, we hope to take this opportunity to learn new ways of conceptualizing, theorizing, and historicizing LGBT activism in West Africa through the case study of Nigeria. We do not approach this topic as experts on LGBT history, nor as Nigerianists. Instead, we position ourselves as emerging scholars firmly opposed to the ongoing and rising homophobia and transphobia across the world. As a group we unequivocally support the LGBT community's right to live and thrive in any society across the world. We see our work as a small contribution to the much larger project of writing the history of LGBT activism in Nigeria, a project that can and should be led by those better positioned to access and analyze the documents and memories necessary for this task.

After situating our arguments in the literature and defining the theoretical themes, this article will chronologically explore the broad historical contours of LGBT organizing in Nigeria. The first section examines the early iterations of LGBT organizing, from the 1970s through the end of military rule in 1999. This early period was characterized by organizations with transnational connections that were not political in their orientation but rather religious, such as the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), or social, like the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance. We include a discussion of the former because the MCC's presence in Nigeria served as a precursor to later LGBT rights organizing, although we conceive of the latter as a form of LGBT activism because a concern for the rights of sexual minorities was woven into its institutional identity. We next examine LGBT organizing from 1999 to 2007, in the early years of the Fourth Republic, when organizations such as Alliance Rights Nigeria and the House of Rainbow moved from the invisible to the visible realm and developed transnational connections that enabled them to offer health and legal support to sexual minorities, particularly gay men. We next use Queer Alliance Nigeria as a lens through which to view the period of LGBT organizing that began in 2008 and continued through the passage of the SSMPA in 2014, and which persists in some form to the present. This contemporary period is marked by an increasing inclusivity and growing connections across the West African region. Finally, our conclusion discusses the effect of the 2014 SSMPA on public opinion and LGBT organizing in Nigeria.

Locating the History of LGBT Activism in Nigeria

Because it is a topic that has so far attracted little research, there is currently no unified historiography of the history of LGBT organizing in Nigeria. Although the goal of our article is to encourage more research in this field, existing scholarship on the causes of homophobia in contemporary Nigeria and on the relationship between religion and homophobia in Africa are the primary literatures with which we will engage. In general, works on both topics tend to dismiss LGBT activism in Nigeria as a movement so small as to be almost non-existent. In so far as they are mentioned in the literature, LGBT activist groups are presented as a new phenomenon. And almost without exception, religion is treated as a force of homophobia. We will argue, however, that LGBT activism in Nigeria does exist, and that it has a history. And although religion has often been harnessed to serve homophobic policies, LGBT activists have also worked together with religious organizations to offer support to LGBT communities.

The handful of scholars who discuss the LGBT movement in Nigeria at all do so exclusively in the context of the present. For example, in his article on LGBT advocacy in Nigeria, Ayodele Sogunro asserts that “until renewed homophobic agitations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was no general need to organize human rights campaigns around the protection of sexual minorities in many African countries, including Nigeria.”⁴ In other words, LGBT activism in Nigeria is seen as having no history. This misconception is not unique to Nigeria, but exists in writings on LGBT activism throughout the African continent, with the notable exception of South Africa. The entry on “Activism in Africa South of the Sahara” in the Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, for example, traces LGBT movements in South Africa back to the 1950s.⁵ For the rest of the continent, however, it focuses exclusively on the twenty-first century (apart from briefly mentioning that movements in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Namibia began to form in the late 1980s and 1990s). This article will instead present evidence showing that the seeds of LGBT activism in Nigeria were planted as early as the 1970s.

Although scholars propose a number of different reasons for the upsurge in homophobia in Africa during recent decades, the consensus seems to be that religion has tended to exacerbate homophobia. Nicholas Alozie, Kathy Thomas, and Patience Akpan-Obong note that “the literature suggests that religion is perhaps the singular most consistent negative source of global disapproval of homosexuality,” and their own findings support this: they argue that the so-called “African gap,” in which there is far less public support for homosexuality in African countries than in other regions of the world, can largely be explained by the higher incidence of religion and “orthodox morality” in African countries.⁶ Asonzeh Ukah argues that religious communities in Nigeria propagate hate speech against LGBT individuals, whereas Ebenezer Obadare points to the “rare alliance” that seems to exist between different religious denominations in Nigeria in their opposition to homosexuality.⁷ Although religion is indeed often harnessed to suppress LGBT rights, the history of LGBT activism in Nigeria reveals that churches have not always served as a uniform and unified source of homophobia. By examining the vital role of religious organizations such as the MCC and the House of Rainbow, this article will explore how spaces of worship can provide a springboard for future LGBT activism, as well as advocate for gender and sexual minorities in Nigeria.

Although it is true that there never existed large numbers of LGBT rights activists in Nigeria, a tendency in the scholarship to highlight just how few there are has allowed the details of these activist movements to be overlooked, and effectively erased. “In a nation of over 160 million, Nigeria's gay-rights activists could fit in one room,” writes Rudolf Gaudio in his 2014 essay on the passage of the SSMPA.⁸ In a 2011 article on Nigeria, Marc Epprecht and Sule Egya state that there is “effectively one gay rights association in the country” and “one gay-friendly church.”⁹ The point in both cases is to impress upon the reader how very small the LGBT rights movement is in Nigeria, and neither article provides information about the activists that do exist. This is likely due to a want of sources: because it is generally highly dangerous to participate in visible LGBT activism within the country, reliable sources on the movement are few and far between. Still, as seen in Kwame Essien and Saheed Aderinto's study of a proposed LGBT rights conference in Ghana in 2006, a careful and close reading of limited sources can still produce valuable insight into this important and often overlooked topic.¹⁰

In order to begin tracing the historical contours of the LGBT rights movement in Nigeria, this article will thus engage with a variety of sources from both Nigeria and abroad. Much of our information on activism in Nigeria during the period before the Fourth Republic (pre-1999) is drawn from reports in newspapers and LGBT activist newsletters published in the United States. Given their origin outside Nigeria, these sources likely overemphasize the role of Nigerian organizations that developed strong connections with foreign activists, and there may well have been other instances of LGBT organizing during the period up to 1999 that do not show up in the sources we had access to from our location outside Nigeria. The sources for the period 1999–2007 are drawn primarily from Nigeria, however, including newspaper articles and blog posts by LGBT activists themselves, a Nigerian government report on HIV, as well as two virtual interviews one of our co-authors conducted with Reverend Jide Macaulay. Although our research on post-2007 LGBT activism in Nigeria is limited by our physical location outside the country, and by our lack of social connections to the underground activist networks that must protect their identities, our sources from this period come directly from the LGBT organizations themselves, via their own websites and online publications.

Because LGBT activists in Nigeria have and continue to face real personal dangers as a result of their activism, we have done our utmost to ensure that no further harm comes to the individuals named herein as a result of our research. As discussed above, our sources are drawn overwhelmingly from newspapers, newsletters, blog posts, and other materials produced by the LGBT activists themselves for public consumption. Our source base has thus helped ensure that we only name individuals whose names and stories have long been publicly available, or, in the case of our co-author's interview with Jide Macaulay, with his express permission. Challenging though it is to research an illegal movement from abroad, we believe this history is an important one. By weaving together a wide variety of limited sources, we seek to bring attention to a history that has been largely overlooked precisely because the sources are so limited. Our sources may not be enough to bring clarity to the precise details of LGBT organizing in Nigeria's past, but taken together they form the blurry outlines of a movement that deserves the clarity of more detailed scholarly attention.

Themes

In the absence of vast sources that address our research topic, we situate the available information alongside the following themes: invisibility and visibility, transnational organizing, and religion. This enables us to locate, analyze and contextualize the information we gathered on the different historical forms of LGBT activism in Nigeria.

Because most forms of LGBT activism in Nigeria operate under a lens of public invisibility, it is easy to deny the existence of LGBT sexualities in the country. The organizations we discuss exhibit instances when their organizing was highly visible, and other instances when it was not. How we think about these instances of public invisibility and visibility is influenced by what S. M. Rodriguez terms “visibility management strategies,” in their attempt to theorize how sexual minorities in Uganda manage their own visibility practices when organizing.¹¹ These visibility management strategies are not taken lightly by either LGBT individuals or LGBT organizations, yet are employed when safety for LGBT individuals is in flux and when “coming out” could result in death. Thus through this lens are we able to locate these strategies, the moments at which they were utilized, and their success at maintaining the safety of individuals and addressing particular goals.

We will also focus on the theme of religion, emphasizing how religiously affiliated organizations such as the MCC and the House of Rainbow played an important role in the LGBT rights movement in Nigeria. These religiously affiliated organizations committed themselves to calling and accepting all into the church, and they worked alongside LGBT individuals to provide safe spaces for them. In the instance of MCC Nigeria this support came primarily through its leader's international activism, as the congregation itself was primarily heterosexual. Through this theme, we argue that Nigeria never had a monolithic homophobic religious sphere.

Third, we will examine transnational organizing within LGBT activism because it is a recurrent theme in the history of the organizations we study. Alongside authors such as Rodriguez, we acknowledge that there exist multiple complications that need to be explored when organizing transnationally.¹² These complications have often arisen due to a disregard for the degrees of power within these transnational relationships, between the global partner and local organization, and in some cases have led to a deterioration of independent local organizing efforts.¹³ The journey that this support and funding takes from Western-based organizations to local organizations in Africa cannot be ignored. Therefore throughout the text we consider the existence of power and its various manifestations which have affected how LGBT organizations and individuals have negotiated and survived within the context of Nigeria.

Transitory Connections: LGBT Organizing during Military Rule

The LGBT organizations that operated in Nigeria during the period between the 1970s and the end of military rule in 1999 did not organize for political rights. Indeed, civil society in general had little room to operate under the successive military regimes that ruled Nigeria between 1966 and 1999, with most governments placing strict limits on political activities and associations.¹⁴ The civil society groups that did exist during the period up to roughly 1980 mainly consisted of trade unions, student groups, and professional associations whose goal it was to urge the state to provide more social services.¹⁵ What Darren Kew and Chris Kwaja call the “third generation” of civil society groups (the NGOs) only emerged after 1980 when the state grew increasingly “corrupt, predatory, and elite-dominated” and nongovernmental organizations formed in order to counter specific abuses of the state.¹⁶ The LGBT organizations examined later in the article tend to fall into the NGO category, which Kew and Kwaja define as “typically small organizations that provide a specialized service or professional skill.”¹⁷ However, we begin our study with an organization that predates the NGO model. Founded in southeastern Imo State in 1974, the MCC did not organize for the political rights of LGBT persons in Nigeria. In fact, the evidence suggests that the congregation was overwhelmingly heterosexual. Still, we consider it an important precursor to later LGBT activism because of its transnational connections to the global LGBT rights movement, its religious orientation, and its provision of health-care services, essential elements in many subsequent LGBT rights organizations.¹⁸

The Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance constitutes another example of an early LGBT organization that operated under military rule, but one with more explicit forays into political organizing for LGBT people than the MCC. Founded in Lagos in 1989—three years after the first AIDS case was recorded in Nigeria in a young woman in Lagos—the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance was a social club that provided HIV-prevention education and organized in defense of the LGBT Nigerian diaspora in the UK.¹⁹ Although the HIV epidemic in Nigeria was initially seen as a medical problem requiring a response from the medical system, civil society organizations soon became involved as well, and the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance played a role in this process.²⁰ This wave of activism occurred prior to the creation of government institutions dedicated to HIV prevention, and the national sentinel surveillance system first began collecting information on high-risk groups, including men who have sex with men (MSM) in 1991.²¹ In this early period, transnational connections between Nigeria-based LGBT organizations and those abroad were transitory: at times quite strong, but at other times disconnected with moments of tension.

The Metropolitan Community Church in Nigeria

According to one version of MCC institutional history, the origin story of MCC Nigeria goes something as follows: In 1974, two gay men in Nigeria who were both devout Christians read an article in a Jehovah's Witness publication, entitled either Awake or The Watchtower. The article condemned the U.S.-based MCC and its progressive attitudes towards sexual minorities. Despite the strongly negative tone of the publication, the two men gleaned that the MCC was known for its “homosexual outreach” and that it was one of the fastest-growing faith communities in the world. As a result, they eagerly reached out to the MCC Fellowship in the United States.²² The U.S.-based clergy of the church received their letter at a time of optimism, when the MCC was expanding both in the United States and abroad, and things somehow fell into place. Key details such as the identity of the two men and what precisely transpired after they sent their letter are not included in this particular rendition of the story, and the circumstances of the founding remain hazy.

Still, although the details themselves are impossible to verify, this founding myth is revealing of the global environment for LGBT organizing in the 1970s. Taking place just a few years after the Stonewall Riots began the modern gay rights movement in the United States in 1969, the founding of MCC Nigeria occurred during a time at which being LGBT carried real dangers in most parts of the world, including both the United States and Nigeria. This story is thus particularly effective for how it subverts the ever-present threat of global homophobia: according to the story it was the global interplay of homophobia and LGBT awakening that brought the MCC to Nigeria. The details on the founding of MCC Nigeria that emerge most clearly in the U.S. primary sources, however, point to a slightly different story.

It is certain that Sylvanus Maduka, a Methodist Minister, played an outsized role in establishing MCC Nigeria. Like the two aforementioned gay Christians in the origin story, Maduka eagerly wrote the MCC Fellowship in the United States asking for assistance with establishing a branch in his country. In 1974, Rev. Lee Carlton responded to Maduka's request and traveled to Nigeria to formally establish an MCC church that opened its doors to congregants without judgment.²³ At the time, MCC leadership was eager to expand the international reach of the church. Before visiting Nigeria, Carlton traveled to Australia where he helped establish three MCC branches, thus adding to the churches established in Toronto and London.²⁴ The new MCC church in Nigeria, though, was significant because Maduka was the first person of color ordained as pastor of an MCC church. His ordination took place at the MCC's General Conference held in Washington, DC, in 1976. Although early reports from the MCC conflict about the location of the Nigerian branch, Maduka most likely started the church in Imo State, which is predominantly Christian and Igbo, before forming congregations in cities like Zaria in Kaduna State.²⁵

The unlikelihood of a Nigerian branch would not have been lost on the original members of the MCC. Nigerian religious organizations were not known for being inclusive of—or concerned with—the LGBT movement. When Rev. Troy Perry founded the MCC in Los Angeles in 1968, the Nigerian Civil War continued unabated as the federal government fought to maintain control over the Republic of Biafra. When the War ended in 1970, a military government-maintained power over a reunited Nigeria and continued to rule when Maduka established the MCC in 1974 in territory formerly held by the Republic of Biafra. It is unclear how many founding principles of Perry's MCC transferred to the church in Imo State. Although Perry originally founded the MCC with the intention of furnishing ministry to gays and lesbians who were excluded from other Christian denominations, there is no evidence that Maduka had the same intention with MCC Nigeria.²⁶

In fact, this is one point of friction that appears in the historical record, because the available sources about MCC Nigeria remain opaque regarding the sexual orientation of its congregants. In a 1995 interview, Rev. Louis Kavar described MCC Nigeria as providing “nonjudgmental inclusion” that responded to the needs of the community it served, further explaining that he did not know the sexual orientation of Maduka.²⁷ Rev. Elder Jean White, who visited MCC Nigeria in the 1980s to establish a health clinic, asked Maduka repeatedly about the demographic composition of his church. Maduka replied that he “[did] not know how many homosexuals [they] have” and that the emphasis should be placed not on homosexuality but instead on “caring for souls and making a better world.”²⁸ Perry, the MCC founder, did not think MCC Nigeria included any LGBT congregants. In a 1989 interview with an LGBT publication in Atlanta, The News asked Perry if the MCC reached out to heterosexuals, and Perry responded, “Absolutely. Fifteen percent of our membership are heterosexuals. For instance, our church in Nigeria for all intents and purposes is completely heterosexual.”²⁹ These pieces of evidence suggest that MCC Nigeria was less an extension of the church founded by Perry in Los Angeles and more an autonomous appendage without an expressed intention of furnishing ministry to LGBT individuals excluded from other Christian denominations.

Even so, Maduka sympathized with the challenges faced by LGBT Christians and sided with the MCC in religious debates about sexuality. In 1993, for example, the MCC engaged in heated written exchanges with Adebisi Sowuni, a co-moderator of the Justice, Peace, and Creation Unit in the World Council of Churches and a member of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Sowuni received letters from Maduka and Rev. Kittredge Cherry, the latter of which sought to persuade Sowuni to include “human rights for lesbian and gay people’’ in the unit's agenda, buttressing the argument by referencing the MCC's 270 churches in fifteen countries, including Nigeria.³⁰ Sowuni, however, vehemently rejected Cherry's proposal and condemned homosexuality as a “behaviour” and a “perversion” in need of Christian correction. Sowuni continued her invective by dismissing the existence of homosexuality in her country: “In Nigeria, homosexuality is an abomination, and, by the Grace of God, is a very rare phenomenon which is strongly deplored by society. It is both a great disservice to the Christian faith and to the Nigerian people for your church to found a branch (or branches?) in this country. We have enough moral problems and we do not need you to introduce another dimension of moral depravity into our society.”³¹

Is a subsequent letter, Cherry responded to Sowuni's assault by pointing out that Sowuni did not say that LGBT people “should be beaten, imprisoned and murdered because of their sexual orientation,” which was the crux of the MCC's human rights argument to hostile members at the World Council of Churches.³² In addition, Cherry clarified the demographics and mission of MCC Nigeria:

With these statements, Cherry characterizes MCC Nigeria as different from the rest of the MCC, given its primarily heterosexual congregation. The point of convergence, according to Cherry, centers on histories of oppression, with the Igbo people from Imo State compared to that of LGBT individuals. The founding of MCC Nigeria shortly after the Civil War, then, takes on new significance. In 1974, Maduka connected with a U.S.-based church that served as a refuge for LGBT people excluded from mainstream Christianity to build an Igbo congregation still reeling from the effects of the Civil War in territory previously controlled by the Republic of Biafra. Maduka preached a different message of inclusivity at MCC Nigeria that included the provision of healthcare services and “worshiping God” as a minority group in a divided nation.

The autonomy of MCC Nigeria appears in the US primary sources as limited engagement with the US-based church, especially during the first decade of ministry. After meeting with Carlton in 1974 and attending the General Conference in 1976, Maduka remained in Nigeria to grow the church with a monthly stipend of $100 sent by MCC headquarters. By the end of the 1970s, Maduka reported as many as six branches in the country, anchored by two major churches in Imo and Kaduna State.³⁴ As MCC Nigeria grew, Maduka wrote multiple letters to headquarters asking for additional financial assistance. In 1979, for example, he asked for more than $10,000 to purchase a van for the church.³⁵ Six years later, the World Church Extension Elder Jean White read letters by Maduka at the twelfth general conference held in Sacramento, California. The letters depicted MCC Nigeria as “financially troubled” and in need of additional monetary assistance.³⁶ From time to time, individual MCC branches in the United States responded to Maduka's pleas for financial assistance by organizing fundraising events. In 1994, for example, the San Jose MCC held a fundraiser for the “Peoples of Color Fund” to support its sister church in Nigeria.³⁷

The strongest connection between MCC Nigeria and its parent church began in the 1980s with the establishment of a health clinic in Imo State. In 1985, Maduka secured a plot of land in Ezinachi, but the plans stalled when the chief of Army Staff, General Ibrahim Babangida, led a coup d’état on August 27 to overthrow the government of Muhammadu Buhari. One year after the coup, Jean White traveled to Nigeria to open the Jean White Memorial Clinic in Ezinachi.³⁸ Further delays prevented her from immediately opening the clinic, which finally began functioning in January 1987. Later that year at the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in Miami Beach, Florida, White projected pictures of the clinic she had taken in Ezinachi. Furthermore, she reported that the clinic had “already grown into a ten-bed hospital,” thus reflecting the desire for health-care services among Ezinachi residents.³⁹ At the inception of the clinic, patrons paid a fee for receiving treatment that supported the nurse in charge of running the facility. Maduka reported to the MCC that “the people are excited and praising God for the help they are receiving.”⁴⁰ Evidently, Maduka's insistence on “caring for souls” included both the spiritual and physical bodies in the congregation.

In one report about the Jean White Memorial Clinic, the author of the World Church Extension Sunday pamphlet linked the provision of health-care services in Nigeria to the fight against HIV/AIDS. The author stated that “of course, many of the patients who will be attending the clinic have AIDS, or “slim disease” as it is known in Africa.”⁴¹ Although Nigeria reported its first AIDS patient in Lagos in 1986, there is no corroborating evidence that the clinic in Ezinachi treated AIDS patients. Most likely, the clinic provided basic health-care services to clients. The MCC author's misconception about the clinic illustrates the prevailing assumptions about MCC branches, namely that they shared the same challenges and threats as members of the U.S.-based church. Although part of the MCC, the Nigerian branch ministered to a different demographic in a different political and social context.

Expanding access to health-care services for Ezinachi residents remained part of MCC Nigeria's core mission into the 1990s. Maduka worked with the Imo State government to officially transform the clinic established by White into a hospital. In July 1990, Maduka reported to the MCC that he expected the government to approve the hospital planning application.⁴² By 1992, the Ministry of Health at Owerri delivered the approval letter for a twenty-two-bed hospital in Ezinachi. When Maduka visited the Ministry to collect the approval letter, he “called for religious bodies to actively participate in health care delivery.”⁴³ In this way, Maduka leveraged his transnational relationship with the MCC to improve access to health care for his congregants and other Ezinachi residents. His work as a religious leader in the health sector foreshadows transnational organizing by LGBT organizations in Nigeria in subsequent decades. Like Maduka, LGBT leaders in the democratic era leveraged transnational connections to improve health-care services; they differed, however, with an explicit focus on LGBT populations and the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Outside of Nigeria, Maduka briefly appeared as an intracontinental champion of Black liberation and LGBT rights in South Africa. In January 1994, Maduka traveled to Johannesburg to meet Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson and Rev. Kittredge Cherry at a central committee meeting for the World Council of Churches. The meeting signaled the coming of a new era for South Africa, as the World Council of Churches had contributed significantly to the liberation of the people by first forming a Programme to Combat Racism in 1968, at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle. During the central committee meeting from January 20 to 28, the Parliament of South Africa agreed to an Interim Constitution that was later enacted after the election on April 27.⁴⁴ The MCC contingent led by Wilson shared with the other participants an interest in racial reconciliation and sought to extend the concern with race to the liberation of sexual minorities. Wilson, Cherry, and Maduka organized a meeting between a Black LGBT church formed in Soweto by Tsietsi Thandekiso and the Reforming Church, a white LGBT church in Pretoria.⁴⁵ Each of the groups was enthused by the Interim Constitution's inclusion of a clause that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Maduka played an important role in facilitating the relationship between the MCC representatives and the Soweto church. Wilson reminisced that “one of my most precious memories is of a prayer meeting we had with Rev. Maduka and the Soweto church. The Holy Spirit was present in a powerful way as we prayed and sang together.”⁴⁶

The 1994 meeting in South Africa was significant for Maduka in one other way. At the meeting, Wilson and Cherry presented him with an honorary plaque commemorating his twenty years of service with MCC Nigeria, still the only MCC branch in an African nation.⁴⁷ Maduka was supposed to receive the plaque at the 1993 MCC General Conference held in Phoenix, Arizona. However, he was unable to secure a visa to travel from Nigeria to the United States during the months of civil and political unrest after President Ibrahim Babangida annulled the June 12, 1993 election.⁴⁸ The journey to South Africa in January 1994 proved eventful as well. Maduka described his difficulty obtaining a visa to South Africa as a Nigerian citizen, and being stranded in Libreville, Gabon for a week after missing a flight connection.⁴⁹ The difficulties that Maduka encountered trying to meet his MCC colleagues outside the borders of Nigeria illustrates an inequality between the American MCC members and their Nigerian colleague. Maduka's nationality disadvantaged him in the realm of international travel necessary to maintain transnational connections. His eventual arrival in South Africa in January 1994 was a boon to him and the ten MCC branches in Nigeria, as Maduka received approximately $5,000 to continue running the church and to file a legal incorporation.⁵⁰

From the high point of the 1994 central committee meeting for the World Council of Churches, Maduka and MCC Nigeria largely disappear from the U.S. historical sources. However, the branch did continue to maintain sporadic contact with the MCC: in 2004, for example, MCC South London sent a computer to Maduka in Nigeria.⁵¹ Little evidence exists to suggest continued collaboration on healthcare services in Ezinachi or LGBT advocacy in Nigeria or on the continent more broadly. In fact, leaders from Nigerian LGBT organizations in the 2000s look back with skepticism on MCC Nigeria and its connections to the global LGBT movements. Macaulay, who continues to be a leader in the Christian and Nigerian LGBT movements, condemns Maduka as a “crook” and a “homophobic” person. Furthermore, Macaulay asks rhetorically where Maduka was when Macaulay and other LGBT activists challenged the “homophobia from the Nigerian government,” referring to the lobbying efforts against the SSMPA that began in the mid-2000s and continue today.⁵² It is clear that Maduka's relationship to the LGBT movement remains a point of friction. Under Maduka, MCC Nigeria never became a proponent of LGBT rights, even as the parent church grew into an influential global network of Christian LGBT activists. Nonetheless, MCC Nigeria figures prominently in the history of LGBT organizing in the country since its religious foundation, transnational connections, and health-care services prefigure the movement that grew exponentially with the onset of democratic rule in 1999.

Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance

The international connections established by MCC Nigeria differ from those cultivated by the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance, a social club for gay men established in 1989. Maduka's national branch of the U.S.-based MCC facilitated his access to funding and resources, while allowing him to maintain autonomy, at least within the national context. The Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance, in contrast, existed as an autonomous organization from its founding, connecting a network of men who attended the same parties and who on a couple occasions broached LGBT activism. The group officially registered as an association in 1989 with an address in Falomo, a neighborhood on Lagos Island. Although the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance reported hosting as many as 1,500 gay men at its parties by 1991, they described the formal meetings as having “very few in attendance.”⁵³ Although the parties were the main attraction, they also connected with Africare, an NGO based in the United States, as early as 1990. At the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance's first formal meeting in November of that year, the organization collaborated with Africare to deliver lectures on HIV/AIDS and safe sex.⁵⁴ This secular connection foreshadows the brief proliferation of LGBT organizations founded in Nigeria in the early 2000s whose members secured funding from international organizations interested in supporting HIV/AIDS patients in the LGBT community. Like many of the organizations established a decade later, though, the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance worked exclusively with gay men, and not at all with women.

The organization, however, was not solely focused on the community of gay men in Lagos, which was still the capital of Nigeria until 1991. The Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance was organized into three regional zones with several state branches, including one in Kaduna, a predominantly Hausa state with a significantly different social and religious composition than Lagos. The Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance held its second formal meeting in Zaria, a major city in Kaduna State with a majority Muslim population. Beyond the organization of parties and meetings, the association also sought to reach an international audience through the publication of articles denouncing the newspaper coverage of gay Nigerian men. For example, members of the group prepared a letter of solidarity for Justin Fashanu, a soccer player based in the UK whose father was Nigerian and mother Guyanese.⁵⁵ Although Fashanu never lived in Nigeria, members of the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance still considered him one of their own and provided support for him during a vile public effort to remove Fashanu from English football. Before the debate became public, Fashanu received threats from British journalists preparing to write about his sexual orientation without Fashanu's consent. Fashanu beat those journalists to the punch by collaborating with The Sun, a popular British tabloid, that ran an article about him under the headline “£1m Soccer Star: I am Gay” on October 22, 1990. In exchange for the exclusive, The Sun paid Fashanu. The Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance, in effect, sought to enter the visible realm of public debate by supporting a first-generation Nigerian soccer player in England who devised his own “visibility management strategies” under pressure from a hostile and homophobic press.⁵⁶

The Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance, however, struggled to connect with international LGBT organizations that its members hoped would publish their letters. Prior to the 1991 report by the International Lesbian and Gay Association on the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance, the group complained that the international LGBT press had allegedly refused to publish previous letters it had sent.⁵⁷ The 1991 report included a plea for assistance, requesting that the International Lesbian and Gay Association facilitate access to the international press for the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance. This disconnect illustrates the challenges inherent in transnational organizing given the unequal power relations between a new LGBT organization on the African continent and the LGBT consortium concentrated in Europe, the UK, and the United States. Later that year, articles appeared in U.S.-based LGBT newspapers, including the Bay Area Reporter and the Dallas Voice, whose editors republished news in the International Lesbian and Gay Association Bulletin. There is no evidence from the U.S.-based LGBT newspapers that the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance continued functioning as a formal organization after 1991. Its members may have retreated to an invisible realm of organizing designed for individual survival “under an ever-threatening twin colossus of traditional conservatism and religious bigotry.”⁵⁸

Alliance Rights: Organizing for Gay Men and Human Rights

On May 29, 1999, an elected civilian government led by President Olusegun Obasanjo took back control of the state from the Nigerian military, ushering in Nigeria's Fourth Republic. Under democratic rule civil society enjoyed greater freedoms than before and LGBT organizations became increasingly visible by registering as non-profits, advocating for the rights of LGBT persons, and providing social and healthcare services. Under President Obasanjo's administration a wide array of international development organizations also began initiating programs in Nigeria, several of them related to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.⁵⁹ It was in this context of increased international attention to the HIV epidemic in Nigeria shortly after the transition to democratic rule in 1999 that Oludare Odumuyi founded Alliance Rights Nigeria, an organization whose early work centered on HIV prevention and support services for gay men. The organization also provided educational materials to its members and held seminars and training programs, including at senior secondary schools in Lagos where lectures focused on AIDS, STDs, and safe sex.⁶⁰ Although a functioning organization beginning in 1999, Alliance Rights operated without any public presence in Nigeria until 2004, the year the National AIDS Conference was held in Abuja. Oludare adopted measures to protect Alliance Rights members from stigmatization or homophobic violence. For example, the organization did not maintain a membership list or publicize the locations of its meeting spaces.⁶¹ The organization's movements between, into, and out of the public realm remained central to its work with gay men in the early 2000s. Alliance Rights and other LGBT organizations founded at this time demonstrate the strategic importance of navigating invisibility.

Like other LGBT organizers in Nigeria, Oludare sought support through transnational connections. Shortly after the organization's founding, Oludare registered Alliance Rights Nigeria with the International Lesbian and Gay Association.⁶² In 2001, Oludare attended a two-week course with the Lithani AIDS Project in Johannesburg, South Africa. The course included training on HIV prevention and care, which Oludare included in the Alliance Rights training. Unlike earlier connections between Nigerian LGBT organizations and those in the UK and United States, Oludare's training in South Africa illustrates the importance of intracontinental connections during the early 2000s. Two years after Oludare visited South Africa, he sought to create a regional gay and lesbian association modeled on the International Lesbian and Gay Association. At the 2003 annual convention of Alliance Rights, Oludare founded the West African Gay and Lesbian Association with the intention of creating a region-wide campaign that tied local networks of sexual minorities together into a coherent whole.⁶³ Oludare's regional vision foreshadowed strategies adopted by the next generation of LGBT organizers, like those in the Queer Alliance Network, who drew strength from regional relationships. The West African Gay and Lesbian Association, however, failed to materialize, and Oludare concentrated his efforts on social and health-care services in Nigeria.

In May 2004, Alliance Rights moved from the invisible to the visible realm of organizing by making its first public appearance at the fourth National AIDS Conference organized in Abuja. The organization's program director, Bisi Alimi, spoke at the event on behalf of Alliance Rights.⁶⁴ By that time, Alimi had worked with the organization for two years. He first joined Alliance Rights in 2002 after learning that his friend from the University of Lagos was dying from HIV/AIDS. Alimi described HIV at that time as “highly stigmatized, particularly within the gay community.”⁶⁵ Alimi's work with Alliance Rights educated gay men about prevention through condom use and about available health-care services for HIV/AIDS. Shortly before his appearance at the National AIDS Conference, Alimi decided to publicly identify as a gay man on the popular talk show “New Dawn with Funmi,” which at the time was broadcast on the government-owned National Television Authority. His decision was partly influenced by a student-run newspaper at the University of Lagos, where he studied theatre, that threatened to identify him as a gay man in a forthcoming article.⁶⁶ Just as the football player Fashanu had done in his 1990 exclusive with The Sun—backed by the Nigerian Gentlemen Alliance—Alimi opted to publicize his gay identity and thus maintain control of the initial announcement. Alliance Rights would later employ this same strategy at the National AIDS Conference.

In May 2004 Alliance Rights was the only LGBT organization in Nigeria with a public presence, and they used the National AIDS Conference as a platform to make a transition into publicly visible advocacy work. The UN Office quotes Oludare as saying, “for most of Nigerians, MSMs [men who have sex with men] are not human beings—they simply don't exist. Recently, some of us have been arrested by the police, thrown into jail and raped in the cells.”⁶⁷ This quote illustrates, from Oludare's perspective, the urgent need for action to stop the physical violence enacted on gay men and to protect their rights as human beings. Oludare also recognizes regional differences, describing the situation in Northern Nigeria as more extreme than in other regions of the country. The UN Office report quotes him as saying, of the North, that “because of the application of Shariah code, they kill men and even young secondary school boys.”⁶⁸ The articles published in the international LGBT press following the National AIDS Conference introduced Alliance Rights to a broader public concerned with LGBT activism on the continent. Moreover, the articles illustrate the transnational connections forged through the coverage of Alliance Rights at the National AIDS Conference.

Later in 2004, the transnational connections materialized for Oludare in the form of an Ashoka Fellowship. The U.S.-based Ashoka organization supports individuals who identify solutions to social challenges, and in 2004 Oludare received the fellowship to support his work with Alliance Rights. In his submission to Ashoka, Oludare described his work as “improv[ing] public attitudes toward sexual minorities and encourag[ing] greater openness among the community of gay Nigerians.”⁶⁹ The visibility of Alliance Rights beginning in May 2004 also facilitated the organization's partnership with the Nigerian Ministry of Health during the 2007 HIV/STI Integrated Biological and Behavioural Surveillance Survey (IBBSS). Oludare and Ifeanyi Orazulike, a project manager at Alliance Rights, facilitated the recruitment of 879 MSMs to complete the survey and, in a crucial move, to include the perspectives of MSMs in the research data.⁷⁰ Thus, by 2007, Alliance Rights not only established itself in the international community as an organization serving the needs of gay men, but also in the Nigerian Ministry of Health.

As Alliance Rights benefited from increased international exposure, its members founded several new organizations that advanced or extended the stated goals of the organization. Some in the new organizations continued to focus on social and health-care services for gay men, others advocated for the legal, social, and religious rights of sexual minorities. In 2005, Davis Mac-Iyalla, a member of Alliance Rights, founded Changing Attitude Nigeria, a branch of the British parent organization that advocates for the inclusion of sexual minorities in the Anglican Church. The timing was propitious in terms of international coverage, because the Anglican Church of Nigeria and its archbishop and primate Peter Akinola were at the same time hardening the church's anti-homosexuality stance. Two years after founding Changing Attitude Nigeria, Mac-Iyalla toured the United States as a gay-rights Christian activist condemning the treatment of gays and lesbians in Nigeria.⁷¹ In this case, Mac-Iyalla leveraged transnational support from UK and U.S.-based churches to advocate for sexual minorities. His contribution to LGBT organizing in Nigeria highlights the role of religious institutions, which serves as a corrective to the literature that characterizes religion as a monolithic homophobic force in Nigeria.

On September 2, 2006, Jide Macaulay, a gay man and ordained Christian minister who had been struggling with his sexuality, returned to Nigeria from London to found the House of Rainbow, an MCC-affiliated congregation that would be welcoming to all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.⁷² Macaulay's dream was to minister to those LGBT community members in faith communities, particularly those in African countries, who had been struggling with persistent stigma and discrimination.⁷³ Now openly gay, he found solace and power in the MCC's vision for a Christian church that rejects homophobia and radically includes LGBT people in its rites.

According to Macaulay, House of Rainbow church meetings began in the hall of a hotel, and later were held in the front room of his flat.⁷⁴ Thirty-two people came to the first meeting, a number that surprised Macaulay; eventually, over 100 people were regular attendees. The House of Rainbow organized events that were attended by about 400 people. Given that it was risky for the hotel to associate itself with the House of Rainbow, it kept raising its rates, forcing the congregants to begin attending services in Macaulay's home.

Other organizations founded in the wake of Alliance Rights engaged with inclusive religious organizations, like the House of Rainbow, to provide social support services to gay men. There was also a lesbian organization, Daughters of Jezebel, which operated under the directorship of Anita Ekhirame. This organization supported calls for the legalization of homosexuality and also critiqued the Nigerian government and society for its hypocrisy.⁷⁵

In 2005, Alimi founded The Independent Project, which organized community outreach programs to educate gay men about HIV/AIDS.⁷⁶ In 2008, The Independent Project organized funds for Macaulay to travel to Bauchi State to visit eighteen men who had been accused of homosexuality.⁷⁷ The Hisbah, a police force created to enforce Shari'a law, arrested the eighteen men in Bauchi State on August 5, 2007 for allegedly dressing in female clothes and attending a gay wedding.⁷⁸ The case was adjourned multiple times over the course of a year, suspending the accused men in limbo as they and their lawyers navigated the courts and homophobia in Bauchi State. Macaulay's visit illustrated local support for the eighteen men at a time when homophobic institutions portrayed LGBT activism as foreign to Nigeria. Moreover, the partnership between The Independent Project and House of Rainbow further illustrates the role of religion as a positive force in LGBT organizing. The founder of Alliance Rights, Oludare, was also a member of the House of Rainbow.⁷⁹

The legal case in Bauchi State of 2007–2008 evokes another strain of LGBT organizing in Nigeria. By the middle of the 2000s, LGBT organizations publicly advocated for the rights of sexual minorities, critiquing the anti-homosexuality bill before the Nigerian legislature. For example, the Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights in Nigeria was founded in 2005 and became a member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association. Members from the Coalition participated in the public hearings held by the Nigerian National Assembly whose bicameral legislature debated bills that would criminalize homosexuality. One of the leading Coalition members who spoke out against the proposed legislation was Oludare, the founder of Alliance Rights.⁸⁰ The turn to political lobbying by Nigerian-based LGBT organizations became increasingly visible as a result of the anti-homosexuality bills before the Nigerian legislature.

This new visibility of LGBT organizations and activists, however, exposed them to violent outbursts of homophobia. In some cases, criminals physically assaulted members who openly identified as gay. In April 2007, criminals broke into Alimi's house, restrained him and his boyfriend, and assaulted Alimi. Shortly after that, Alimi left Nigeria for the UK.⁸¹ In other cases, the violence appeared as targeted outings in the Nigerian press, of the sort Alimi and the footballer player Fashanu had grappled with in the past. For example, on September 12, 2008, the names, addresses, and photographs of twelve members of the House of Rainbow were published by several newspapers.⁸² As a result, the outed members lost their jobs or were evicted from their homes. Soon thereafter, Macaulay left Nigeria for London, where he continues to run the House of Rainbow. These examples demonstrate the personal risks associated with LGBT organizing, especially around the time the Nigerian National Assembly was debating the anti-homosexuality bill.

Another event at approximately the same time as the assault and targeted outings, signaled the end of the first wave of LGBT organizing in the Fourth Republic. On May 20, 2007, Oludare, the founder and director of Alliance Rights, died, and the organization declined in visibility, possibly ceasing to exist entirely. Thus, the events in 2007 and 2008 constitute an important historical juncture for LGBT organizing in Nigeria.⁸³ In the first phase of organizing during the Fourth Republic, Alliance Rights featured as a central node with members who developed strategies for moving from the invisible to visible realms at important moments. Moreover, Alliance Rights and its members forged transnational connections, providing social and health-care support to, and later advocating for, sexual minorities in Nigeria. Although religious institutions in Nigeria expressed increasingly homophobic views during the first wave, LGBT organizations worked within and alongside Christian groups, including the Anglican Church and the House of Rainbow. It is unclear, however, to what extent the LGBT organizations during this wave included a diversity of sexual minorities. The most visible organizations, like Alliance Rights, catered their services to gay men only. The next wave of LGBT organizations in Nigeria addressed this lack of inclusivity by working with a broader range of gender identities.

Queer Alliance Nigeria: Inclusive and Regional LGBT Organizing

In 2008, Rashidi Williams delivered a speech to the National Assembly opposing the anti-homosexuality bill that would criminalize Nigeria's LGBT community. Williams urged “the House of Representative and our lawmakers [to] work with us to understand the concept of sexuality and sexual orientation through our experiences and not create laws that will punish us needlessly.”⁸⁴ The “us” mentioned by Williams refers to the LGBT community in Nigeria and to Queer Alliance Nigeria, the organization he founded. An organization focused on human rights in the LGBT community, Queer Alliance Nigeria used education, advocacy, empowerment, research, and publications to advance its goals. Williams's organization adopted strategies used by previous LGBT organizations in Nigeria, such as Alliance Rights, and innovated new approaches to build a contemporary movement responding to the needs of the LGBT community across West Africa. Although other LGBT organizations in Nigeria also operated during this time, this section focuses on Queer Alliance Nigeria to illustrate continuities with and changes from previous LGBT organizations.

One of the factors that set Queer Alliance Nigeria apart from previous LGBT organizations in Nigeria was its use of social media and the internet. By organizing online, Queer Alliance Nigeria situated itself within what Kew and Kwaja consider to be the “fourth generation” of Nigerian civil society groups: internet-based networks and social movements.⁸⁵ Beginning around 2005, a number of these groups emerged, which they describe as made up primarily of “middle-class and more affluent Nigerians” who “used their tech savvy to try to transform the very neopatrimonial heart of Nigerian politics, filling the streets with protesters and tipping elections away from incumbents in order to promote reform and anti-corruption themes.”⁸⁶ Although the use of social media has proven highly effective in political organizing, Kew and Kwaja also note that relying on digital organizing tools can make it harder to reach those Nigerians who are illiterate, who cannot afford internet access, or who lack consistent access to electricity.

As past organizations did, Queer Alliance Nigeria also provided direct services and education around HIV/AIDS for the LGBT community. For example, they posted an article on their website containing tips on things to consider before engaging in sexual activity and encouraging the MSM community to get tested once a year.⁸⁷ Addressing HIV/AIDS was a major focus of LGBT organizations during the Fourth Republic, with Alliance Rights Nigeria launching at an AIDS conference and committing much of its organizing work to HIV/AIDS education and prevention. However, Alliance Rights Nigeria primarily served the needs of MSMs and largely excluded other LGBT identities. One of Queer Alliance Nigeria's main goals for 2011 was therefore to intentionally implement services that provided HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment to WSWs, or women who have sex with women.⁸⁸ Furthermore, another goal was to train twenty-five peer educators to work throughout Nigeria to ensure the LGBT population received proper HIV prevention, care, and treatment. They also set the goal of reaching out to LGBT-friendly doctors who could provide services for those in need.⁸⁹ Queer Alliance Nigeria's HIV/AIDS programs thus emphasized care and prevention for marginalized LGBT identities while also expanding relationships with medical experts.

In addition to expanding HIV/AIDS education and services to other LGBT identities, Queer Alliance Nigeria also aimed to provide legal support for those who were victims of homophobic laws, policies, or other forms of discrimination. The group also sought to provide vocational training for LGBT youth who were not able to get an education, and for those encountering economic hardships.⁹⁰ Moreover, they hoped to develop the next generation's leadership skills and aimed to provide a Queer Summit for Nigeria's LGBT youth.

Given the developments above, Queer Alliance Nigeria and the Nigerian LGBT movement can arguably be considered one of the most politically mature LGBT movements in West Africa during this time period. In a report, “We Exist: Mapping LGBTQ Organizing in West Africa,” Mariam Armisen highlights Queer Alliance Nigeria's work building safe houses for LGBT people who were in violent situations or kicked out by family or landlords.⁹¹ Queer Alliance Nigeria's safe house was located in Lagos and provided housing for a period up to six months. While in the safe house, LGBT people were provided food, transportation, and all other necessities needed to survive.⁹² The organization also developed a plan to help people after leaving the safe house, which often involved relocating them to another city. Queer Alliance Nigeria's safe house was not the only one in Nigeria; House of Rainbows had a safe house in Ibadan, and there was another in Northern Nigeria.⁹³ Safe houses provide an example of how Queer Alliance Nigeria and the LGBT movement in Nigeria advanced the tactics of LGBT organizing in the period immediately preceding the passage of the SSMPA.

Queer African Youth Network

In the early 2000s Alliance Rights Nigeria tried unsuccessfully to build a network of West African LGBT organizations. Queer Alliance Nigeria picked up this effort with a 2010 gathering in Lagos that brought together LGBT activists to develop the organizational program of the Queer African Youth Network.⁹⁴ Queer African Youth Network was a queer feminist organization that sought to support the work of marginalized LGBT identities and fight against the homo-patriarchy in African LGBT organizing communities.⁹⁵ The network was around for six years and built a strong and mobilized movement, but after 2016 there remains no record online of its work. Much of its organizational success was due to the contributions of Queer Alliance Nigeria and the Nigerian LGBT community. Although little is known about the discussions that took place at the 2010 gathering, it is likely they addressed the narrow focus on MSMs adopted previously by many African LGBT organizations. According to Queer African Youth Network's website, they emerged in response to this issue.⁹⁶ Throughout West Africa, they built their movement by “supporting young activists to develop their own sense of power and their leadership potential.”⁹⁷ They had an activist school, provided funds for youth to start their own organizations, published an online magazine called Q-Zine, conducted research and wrote reports, and participated in advocacy work. Thus, Queer African Youth Network is an example of a strong, newer movement of African LGBT youth who are fighting for their future.

First African Conference on Sexuality and Christianity

When referring to the role of the West in introducing homophobia in Africa, the current African LGBT movement sees this process occurring in the twenty-first century, not just the colonial period.⁹⁸ The African sexuality and Christianity conference discussed the “right-wing USA groups influencing the agenda of Church and Politics,” arguing that the British introduced homophobia to Africa and the United States is now helping to sustain it.⁹⁹ Queer Alliance Nigeria also posted an article summing up the work of Reverend Kapya Kaoma on the “U.S. Right's promotion of an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles.”¹⁰⁰ According to Kaoma, there is evidence that links U.S. conservatives with religious leaders in Nigeria and other African countries. Rather than letting the West speak for LGBT Africans, Kaoma draws attention to the role of U.S. conservatives in promoting homophobia in Africa, and cautions that not all African religious leaders accept this relationship. For their part, Rashadi Williams and Queer Alliance Nigeria have shown that LGBT Africans are organized and leading their own struggle for rights, through both visible and invisible organizing.

Queer Alliance Nigeria brought a more inclusive approach to LGBT activism in Nigeria while establishing an online presence that highlighted and uplifted the lived experiences of Nigeria's LGBT community. Although the majority of their work was situated in Nigeria, the organization had a regional consciousness and united LGBT activists throughout West Africa. In addition to contributing new organizing approaches to Nigeria's LGBT movement, Queer Alliance also continued the work of previous LGBT organizations by continuing coalitions with religious institutions and leaders.

Conclusion: LGBT Organizing after the Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Although laws criminalizing same-sex sexual activity have existed since the colonial period, recent legislation—most notably the 2014 Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act—has made the legal situation more dire for LGBT people in Nigeria. Reports of arrests and police brutality targeting this vulnerable community are common and widespread throughout the country, and public opinion remains overwhelmingly negative and intolerant of LGBT rights.¹⁰¹ In recent years, various polling firms have tracked changes in public opinion on this issue in Nigeria; most have found overwhelming opposition with a mixed trendline.

According to the Pew Research Center, attitudes remain relatively unchanged. In both 2006 and 2013, 98 percent of Nigerians agreed with the statement “homosexuality should not be accepted by society.”¹⁰² Only 1 percent disagreed. On the other hand, an NOI Polls survey of Nigerian adults from 2017 showed a 7 percent increase in the acceptance of LGBT people since 2015, and an increase from 30 percent to 39 percent in agreeing that LGBT people deserve equal access to public services, including education, health care, and housing.¹⁰³ However, the percentage of respondents believing that homosexuality should be criminalized increased by 4 percent to 90 percent. Finally, the same percentage of respondents agreed with the statement that the country would be better off with no LGBT people in it, a finding that is unchanged from 2015.

In line with the Pew Research Center and NOI Polls, Afrobarometer survey results from 2015, 2017, 2021, and 2022 find that Nigerians disapprove of LGBT persons at high rates.¹⁰⁴ Faced with the question of whether or not the respondent would like to have a homosexual as a neighbor, an overwhelming majority responded in the negative. When the respondents are disaggregated by location, sex, and religion, the data suggest that urban dwellers and women were slightly less accepting than their rural and male counterparts, while the trendline for Christians and Muslims is more mixed. Figure 3 shows the percentage of respondents in each category who responded with “strongly dislike” or “somewhat dislike.” Due to small sample sizes, statistical issues, and COVID-19 restrictions in place during the 2021 survey wave, these results should be approached with a degree of caution.

The legal and attitudinal situation in Nigeria surrounding the rights of LGBT people is, as it is elsewhere in the world, malleable and in flux. Nevertheless, laws and public opinion remain extremely negative and sexual and gender minorities in the country are highly vulnerable to arrest, harassment, police brutality, imprisonment, and even killing. Thus, not only do LGBT activists operate under the threat of arrest, but they also encounter high levels of homophobia from the general public when visibly operating. And yet, activists continue to organize for LGBT rights.

Post-SSMPA Organizing

After the SSMPA passed in 2014, many LGBT organizations, including Queer Alliance Nigeria, disappeared from the public scene, likely going underground due to violence associated with the homophobic law. Nonetheless, organizations such as the International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights remain visible. Although not focused exclusively on LGBT rights, it has been allied with the LGBT community since its founding at the turn of the twenty-first century. In 2019, the organization defined its work as advocating “for the sexual health and rights of society's most disenfranchised groups, including youth, sexual minorities, survivors of sexual violence, commercial sex workers, and widowed women living with HIV/AIDS.”¹⁰⁵ When Nigeria introduced an anti-gay marriage bill in 2006, the organization played a leading role in building a coalition of LGBT and ally organizations to defeat the bill. Since 2014, however, because of the SSMPA its advocacy has significantly decreased and is no longer an outward-facing aspect of their work.

Although in the current moment it is difficult and dangerous for organizations in Nigeria to explicitly identify themselves as working for LGBT rights without risking punishment under the SSMPA, LGBT organizing and advocacy continues. The Initiative for Equal Rights is an organization that remains active and visible in Nigeria today, advocating for LGBT rights and safety in cooperation with a wide array of international partners. Founded in 2005 in direct response to the marginalization of sexual minorities in Nigeria's HIV prevention strategies, The Initiative for Equal Rights maintains a robust internet and social media presence that renders it highly visible.¹⁰⁶ There are also several individual Nigerian activists who are vocal about their LGBT identity. One example is Boye Black, who founded an online publication called the Rustin Times where he publishes articles about the LGBT community in various parts of Africa. Another, Ifeatu Nnaobi, uses digital methods to advocate for social justice issues and LGBT rights. In these publications Nigerians discuss openly identifying as LGBT in Nigeria, how their families responded to their coming out, and their hopes for the future.

In 2018 a Lagos-based writer in the Rustin Times encouraged people to “keep talking, keep sharing, educate, advocate, volunteer, donate and eventually we will all be the collective voice against injustice.”¹⁰⁷ LGBT organizing in Nigeria has gone through a number of transitions, strategically employing invisibility and visibility in response to the evolving legal landscape. As Nigerians took to the streets in mass numbers in October 2020 demanding an end to the country's Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) police unit, we witnessed a resurgence of a visible form of LGBT activism. In addition to protesting against police violence, those in the streets seized the moment to challenge other forms of neglect by the government. There were numerous posters and videos posted on social media asserting that “Queer and Trans Lives Matter,” and bringing attention to the harmful effects of the SSMPA laws. Activists argued that these laws influenced the manifestation of a culture, arguably state sanctioned, of homophobic violence and other gross human rights violations. Although organizing today looks different from how it looked before the passage of the SSMPA, Nigeria's LGBT community is still speaking out and advocating for themselves in the ways they have historically, while also adopting new ways of organizing in the new legal environment. This is a movement with a rich, bold, and nuanced history, with many stories yet to be told.

Notes