Bridget Okwuchi Alichie Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, Canada. Contact: [email protected]; +1 587-879-9899

“Lives at the Margin”: Exploring the Homophobia Epidemic in Nigeria.

Abstract Previous studies on homosexuality have relied mostly on the cultural and religious factors in the framing and responses to same-sex acts as a taboo subject from traditional times. This has proven conflicting with emerging homophobia epidemic since the Nigerian Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) of 2013. Thus, relevant theoretical agendas were deployed to explore homosexuality from the lens of political (state-sponsored) aspects. Using a three-fold model, the study detailed the recurring similarities in relation to the histories, features and mechanisms across various Nigerian state regulatory regimes from colonial to post-colonial regimes. It further addressed how prevailing traditional framings and responses to homosexuality ultimately shapes state-sponsored regulatory forms. Findings revealed an urgent need for a holistic approach which coheres cultural, religious and political motivations for homophobia as interlocking systems that sets homosexuals (LGBTQs) at the margins of society for solutions which will revolutionize the current hostile milieu. Keywords: Anti-gay legislation, homophobia, homosexuality, LGBTQ, Nigeria, SSMPA

Note: The author declares that there are no competing interests or any consideration for publication of this research by another journal.

Introduction

Homophobia, the fear, negative feelings or attitudes towards homosexuality and persons identified or perceived as homosexuals (LGBTQs) is fast constituting a new epidemic across virtually all spheres in Nigeria, like many other developing contexts in contemporary times. In

2016, Human Right Watch, an international organization which investigates human rights abuses worldwide, reports that Nigeria had witnessed a phenomenal rise in homophobia. The rise was linked to success of the SSMPA in the Nigerian senate in 2013 and its eventual signing into law by President Goodluck Jonathan in January 2014.

Thus, as at the time of this report in 2016, nearly 200 LGBTQ persons had purportedly faced varying degrees of judicial and extrajudicial violence which includes: arbitrary arrests, detentions, fines, torture and harassments as well as cases extreme cases of lynching and mob violence across Nigeria. Owing to this, the report positioned Nigeria alongside Uganda and Russia on its global watchlist as the three nations spreading the fastest a new wave of homophobia epidemic worldwide, thereby validating an earlier 2013 study of the Pew Research Center which dubbed Nigeria the world’s most hostile nation to gays.

Similar regional reports by Carroll & Itaborahy (2015) for the International Lesbian Gay

Association (ILGA) listed 73 nations with anti-gay legislations against consensual homosexual relationships to reveal a growing contemporary trend in state-sponsored homophobia globally. Out of the 73 nations listed, 34 were from the 54 African countries and had varying degrees of proscriptions against their LGBTQ populations. However, Nigeria and Uganda were ranked as the

2 among these 34 African nations with the most stringent anti-gay laws since in recent global surveys. This records ultimately suggested that Nigeria is the sole nation within the West African region with stringent state-sponsored anti-gay situation in the global contemporary ranking of homophobic nations due to the SSMPA.

In spite of the preceding trend, most sexuality and queer literature on Nigeria seem evasive of the current concerns of homophobia in relation to how consensual homosexual (same-sex) relationships can find expressions within ostensible hostile state-sponsored homophobic milieu.

Rather the scant literature sources on have so far veered into variegated scholarly inquiry which treated various regulatory regimes on homosexuality in Nigeria as incongruent. In its place, this study offers a three-fold discourse as a viable and holistic approach to mitigating the widespread homophobic epidemic.

To situate this, the study mapped the regulatory trajectories from colonial to post-colonial

Nigeria under a three-fold discourse which detailed the histories, features, impacts and mechanisms within each regime. it went beyond the current socio-cultural scholarly strictures, into the domains of centralized state-sponsored regulatory regimes, and how they shape wider experiences and responses of criminalized homosexual populations in relation to the wider society.

Furthermore, drawing upon Foucault’s repressive hypothesis and biopolitical power, it highlighted how state disciplinary mechanisms of power can function over subjects, through interconnected mechanisms of power ranging from the nature of legislations, functions, strategies and outcomes. In order to demonstrate the role of the state in ostensibly creating extremely oppressive political contexts which can be reinforced by mainstream non-state actors in different ways which reflect their everyday lives. It further directed attention to the widespread representations of homosexuality as a Western and un-African phenomenon within African contexts, and in so doing unsettling such popular contentions through the exposé on the origins and trajectories of homosexuality from traditional times.

Thus, based on the in-depth theoretical analyses, the study offered remedial measures through which the growing incidences of homophobia can be sufficiently understood and addressed in Nigeria, and across other affected African contexts.

Historicizing homosexuality & the anti-homosexuality struggles worldwide

Homosexuality which was originally called sodomy is as old as man, and it is a concept used to refer to sexual behaviors and desires between males or between females. Widespread perceptions of its origin draw from organized religious standpoints of Christian biblical injunctions in Leviticus 18: 22 and Genesis 19, which characterize same-sex intercourse as immoral sexual acts and the cause for God’s destruction of biblical Sodom and Gomorrah (Barnecka et al., 2005;

Lehrmann, 2005). Early modern history of Roman and Greek empires however perceived sodomy as customarily a matter of individual responsibility and choice, until about the 13th century

Victorian times when it got codified as a crime against the order of nature and punishable by death in English common law (Halperin, 1990).

In relation to conceptualizing homosexuality, extensive sexuality literature of the 20th revealed that a Swedish medical doctor and psychiatrist, Lars Ullerstam in 1966 coined the acronym LGBT which he used to denote Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgenders in studies on sexual minorities (Barnecka et al. 2005). However, Q was added by later authors who despite

Ullerstam’s pathologizing of homosexuality as a disease in the field of psychiatry and medicine, together with other sexual acts of pedophilia, bestiality among others accepted his coinage. Thus, this coined acronym gradually caught on and was popularized during the 1970 Gay

Liberation March (GLM) which first held in New York City following the first series of riots which started in 1969 at one of the gay bars called Stonewall (Barnecka et al., 2005). Other similar movements listed were those that were subsequently held under the same acronym such as; the first LGBTI Pride Parade in Los Angeles, the first "Gay-in" held in San Francisco etc. several others around that decade.

However, while these huge networks steadily increased across western nations demanding decriminalization and restoration of the rights of LGBTs worldwide, very few LGBTQ organizations officially existed in African nations. there still existed in Africa. Some of these few anti-homosexuality networks are the Gay Association of South Africa (GASA), Coalition of

African Lesbians (CAL) and Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), among very few others which merely exist clandestinely in few other African contexts (Engelke, 1999). In Nigeria particularly, the existence of homosexuality from pre-colonial to postcolonial Nigerian times although initially tolerated with no criminal/illegal connotations attached to it and subsequently criminalized, have always had negative attitudes trailing the acts (Epprecht, 2009).

Rather than assessing the implications of contemporary laws, scholarly debates have divided for or against the Western and “un-African” nature of homosexuality rather than using the few ethno-historical evidences to settle the binary scholarly discourse. For instance, Epprecht

(2009) revealed the existence of homosexual acts in pre-colonial traditional Nupe culture of

Northern Nigeria long before the 16th century advent of colonialism. Ajibade (2013) in his own account found that among the Yoruba of Southern Nigeria as traditional ritual activities within deity practices. Comparable evidences also abound across many other pre-colonial African contexts. Sander (1997) for instance cited extensive cases across the ancient Sudanese and South Africa (SA) contexts, like many other ancient African contexts where he posits that homosexuality was widely accepted before colonialism based on personal choices or situations.

In addition, Sander (1997) also revealed that whereas information on lesbian activities were scarce in pre-colonial literature on Sudan and SA, the existence of boy-wives were well documented as known practice, and even referred to in native names across some pre-colonial Zulu and Ngoni tribes, same as among the Zandes of Sudan. Tamale (2013) in his account showed pre- colonial histories of same-sex activities among the Nzima of Ghana, Ndebele, San and Shona of

Zimbabwe, Tutsis of Rwanda and Burundi, Buganda and Langi of Uganda among many others were the people engaged in such same-sex acts for spiritual re-armament in pre-colonial times.

Particularly, within the Nigerian and African contexts.

In spite of this, several scholarly works, as well as mainstream discourses (media, government etcetera) around homosexuality debates continue to focus on Western/non-Western import of these acts amidst a phenomenal spread of a new wave epidemic in African nations starting from Nigeria and Uganda (Human Rights Watch, 2016). It proves even more surprising that no official LGBTQ rights organizations are so far supported to exist officially in these two nations, such that even the sole case in Nigeria receives no attention from the state and the citizens

(TIERs, 2015).

By contrast, there exist some popular anti-LGBTQ organizations in some African nations of South Africa, Mozambique, Seychelles and a few budding ones in other African nations, where coincidentally LGBTQ populations in those contexts reportedly recorded many success stories

(Engelke, 1999). Some of these organizations include: the Gay Association of South Africa

(GASA), regional Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) etc, with the latter experiencing massive harassment due to unacceptance in the Zimbabwe. On the contrary though, the homosexuality rights movements and populations in Nigeria have been rather forced into deeper underground, due to extreme discrimination and stigmatization by the public, as well as badgering by the police (Engelke, 1999; Akinwotu, 2008).

Consequently, in the face of the raging homophobia epidemic across Nigeria, very little scholarly work have yet favored the situation of homosexuals amid the hostile milieu in Nigeria, thus justifying why the journalistic sources currently lends credence to the discourse. This evasiveness of scholarly input perhaps draws from the widespread societal disapproval and low acceptability of such discourse deemed to be taboo subjects across all Nigerian cultures.

State Legal & regulatory frameworks: The three-fold discourse

Significantly, literature on homosexuality from Nigeria’s colonial past to the current post- colonial times evidently disconnects the nature, features and impacts of regulatory trajectories across epochs. To address this, I examine all regulatory regimes on homosexuality in Nigeria under three folds, mapping the interconnectedness of all three legislations (from pre-colonial to post- colonial times) within the frame of its collapsible strategies and outcomes.

The first fold draw one the first official state legislative regime of the British colonial government which initiated its anti-sodomy laws from the 1860s enshrined in the “Unnatural offences” section 377 of its penal code to punish sexual intercourse against the order of nature

(Human Rights Watch, 2008). The law specifically states:

“Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment … for a term which may extend to 10 years and shall be liable to fine”. Otunba (2014) notes that enforcement mechanisms such as mass media, police, courts etc. were deployed by the colonial governments to punish victims. This first fold apparently marks the beginning of centralized state-sponsored intense regulatory activities in the realm of homosexuality or same-sex consensual relationships in Nigeria as widespread reports of abuse, harassment, discrimination, arrests and unlawful detentions took precedence, as opposed to the earlier pre-colonial times when it appeared tolerated.

The second fold of homosexuality legislations coincided with the Nigerian transition from military to civilian rule in 1999 which evidently relaxed the socio-political milieu and allowed for

12 out of the 19 northern states to enact a plural-legal (dual) system in defiance of the secular

Nigerian constitutional stipulations under an imported Arabic Shari’a rule. Ostein (2007) reports sustain this argument on the birth of Shari’a Islamic law in 1999 and the challenge of the Northern

Nigerian Shari’a import operating side by side with the existing civil laws (dual or plural legal system) since then. The Shari’a law eventually introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act under section 284 Northern States Penal Code of the Federal Provisions Act which applies to all northern states within the Shari’a jurisdiction.

These states under the Shari'a penal code are namely: Zamfara, Yobe, Sokoto, Niger,

Jigawa, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, Gombe, Borno and Bauchi states. Corina (2012) notes that a previous country Somalia which imported and incorporated similar Shari’a Islamic anti- homosexuality legislation throughout its country, was a nation of almost hundred percent Muslim population. On the other hand, the Northern Nigeria in its case, exist within a secular Nigerian state, yet forcefully administer same Shari’a Muslim anti-homosexuality laws throughout the region, irrespective of the victim’s religious affiliation (Muslim or Christian), and regardless of a victim being an indigene, non-indigene, resident foreigner or tourist in these states. The Sharia anti-homosexuality legislation is as stated in Ostein (2007) is specifically enshrined in the 284 of the Northern Nigeria, Federal Provision Act law which reads:

“Whoever has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to fourteen years and shall also be liable to fine”. Section 405 and 407 also add variations to the main legislation: “A male person who dresses or is attired in the fashion of a woman in a public place or who practises sodomy as a means of livelihood or as a profession is a "vagabond". Under Section 407, the punishment is a maximum of one year's imprisonment or a fine, or both”. Section 408 defines homosexuals as different from acceptable global definitions thus: “Incorrigible vagabond" is any person who after being convicted as a vagabond as above, commits any of same offences which will render him liable to be convicted as such again, the punishment under Section 408 is a maximum of two years' imprisonment or a fine, or both”. In the shari’a penal codes (sharia-esque) outlined above, the punishments of all liwat

(sodomy) activities were to be administered using under the following stipulations; 100 lashes as punishment for unmarried male homosexuals, 50 lashes and/or six months jail terms for lesbianism (sihaq) among the single women, death by stoning for the married women among other punitive measures (Ostein, 2007). Strategies of execution deployed the use of special enforcement committees appointed and funded by the northern states’ Shari’a Islamic government through

Hisbahs (Sharia version of police and courts). Thus, although there was no claim of putting homosexuals to death, a bulk of reports showcase how these enforcement agents meted out punishments at different times to both suspected or real victims in the form of lashing, discriminations, arrests, fines and detentions.

The third fold of anti-homosexuality legislations which ultimately came through the Same-

Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) in 2013. One major factor that fueled its passing into national law started was the Sharia Act of 1999 which first passed under the President Obasanjo who turned a blind eye to the northern governors’ challenge of national authority and consequent operation of a dual legal system in the North. Consequently, the third fold anti-homosexuality Bill started in the Nigerian senate in 2006 but was unsuccessful for many years due to its discordant political state during the then president Obasanjo third term bid which eventually failed.

Oduah (2014) submitted that the final reading of the Bill in the floor of the Nigerian senate in which led to its subsequent implementation in 2013 during Jonathan Goodluck’s administration was majorly championed and subsequently won by northern leaders who currently form the majority in the Nigerian senate. The 2013 SSMPA stipulates as follows:

“There shall be a prison term of 14 years for anyone who enters into same-sex marriage, and 10-year jail term for anyone who either registers, operates or participate in gay clubs, organizations and societies, or even directly or indirectly makes a public show of same-sex amorous relationship”. In the same vein, “there shall be a jail term of 10 years for any person or group of persons that either witnesses, administers, abets or aids any same-sex marriage; supports the operation, registration and the sustenance of gay clubs, organizations, societies, meetings or processions anywhere in Nigeria”.

Since the bill implementation, no official records of death sentences and long imprisonments have been revealed but human rights violations have been prevalent which include over 200 arrests and various forms of abuse ranging from: arrests, fines, physical torture, unlawful detention and mob attacks among others (Human Rights Watch, 2016). Although it has been argued therein that the anti-gay legislative and judicial regimes were mostly aligned to religious and cultural taboo, rather than as capital punishment on grounds of sexual identity/orientation. it poses a pertinent question of what basis homosexuality would be criminalized within a secular state.

Theoretical underpinnings: Do States sponsor homophobia? In exploring the nature of these three-fold anti-homosexuality legislations across three different regimes, there exist similar exemplars in their nature, structures and strategies, as each fold, in one form or another, have either followed up from, or have been influenced from the earliest version. Central arguments of how state disciplinary regimes are created and shaped across the colonial and post-colonial Nigeria system aptly fits within the Foucauldian conceptions of power.

In Foucault’s repressive hypothesis, he critiqued the role of the state in the creation of obstinate binary which spilled into the realm of sexuality for the policing of sexual statements/enunciations and its consequent creation of problematic nature. He adds that state repressive regimes as engendering structures of change from pre-Victorian times when sexuality moved from a function of what people do (sexual orientation); to the contemporary when sexuality became the function of who people are (sexual identity) is grossly faulty. To that end, he posits that sex is an artificial construct hinged on the ways society device sexuality to incorporate encompassing category of the sexual organs and acts, which led to applying the concept of sex based on gender.

Nell & Shapiro (2013: 11) also offered useful support to Foucault and critiques modern day sexuality rhetoric, which has become “a matter of identity, rather than a mere practice”, like it had been from the ancient times. On the other hand, Barnecka et al. (2005) offered varied insights to justify how underlying biological interpretations came to be ingrained in the understandings of homosexuality, using Ulrichs’s first theory, Richard Kraft-Ebing and Magnus Hirschfield advanced on how origins of same-sex attraction stemmed from biological character. Apparently, this is an argument pursued by authors vis-à-vis the state being at the center of problematic nature of hegemonic heteronormativity through its creation of obstinate binary as a readymade formula of what sexual identity and relations should entail (Allen & Mendez, 2018; Lasio et al, 2018; Foucault, 1992;

1980).

However, However, studies within the Nigerian academy have proven that, by demonstrating how state control and tightening up of rules, rather than producing a counter-effect of proliferation of sexuality discourses as theorized by Foucault, has rather installed a culture of silence (Ajuwon, 2007). This aligns also with a study by Irazabel & Huerta (2016) in which the authors found that among the LGBTQ populations in New York City, the nature of discriminations and contempt seemingly faced stripped them of self identity and resulted in internalizing of those identities that societies project on them. Similar implications of obstinate sexuality scripting within the Nigerian context was found as capable of engendering “secretive homosexualities” (Epprecht

& Egya, 2011: 367).

The foregoing outcomes according to Irazabel & Huerta (2016: 167) re-echoes Du Bois double consciousness in capturing how homophobic structures often create open and closeted homosexual personalities based on differing levels of discriminations of everyday lives. Also unpacking the Foucauldian conceptions of how disciplinary techniques of state can work in relation to state legislative regimes such as the SSMPA in Nigeria, Foucault’s submission below proves useful in understanding how state seize control of power from the past can replicate such in newer models in the contemporary:

“New technology of power does not exclude the former, or exclude disciplinary technology, but it does dovetail into it, integrate it, and modify it to an extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques” (Foucault, 1992: 242).

This study thus seem attuned to the Foucault’s repressive hypothesis which established a modern paradox positing that rather than sexual repression achieving its purpose, it often spirals into a defiant counter-productive kind of revolutionary and personal liberation (much like preaching) by witnessing a huge proliferation of discourses concerned with sex. Such that the intended policing of sexual statements, control over such enunciations by the state often birth

“veritable discursive explosion”.

Furthwermore, the Foucauldian state disciplinary mechanism of power raises another deep theoretical question as to why, rather than expounding on how affected individuals (LGBTQs) direct themselves within state disciplinary mechanisms of power while being exclusively addressed based on these exterior techniques of government rather than how they feel about their identities. It would help in advancing the joint complicity of non-state actors (both mainstream and marginal groups) on one hand, or what power individuals have (if any) within the cultural strictures of everyday life, in subverting the massive gaze of the state on them through its political institution.

Beyond national borders to the global perspective also, attention easily shifts from how

Foucault examined sexuality to the question of how colonials exerted powers in former empires.

In emphasizing how the pervasiveness of biopower works in colonial contexts, Rifkin (2014) argues against the dismissive and overly euro-centric position of Foucault’s repressive hypothesis.

Rifkin insists that colonial regimes utilize their biopolitical power to impose strict sex and gender binaries which has been permanently imprint on subjects the lasting “perceptions of particular social practices as violating heteronormative principles” (2014: 156). Notwithstanding, the massive role of the state sexuality regimes could still be gleaned from the centrality of political factors which have so far produced adverse effects of secretive sexualities on affected victims, due to the setting off of the state-sponsored homophobia epidemic of the recent years.

Most importantly, assessing the nature of the penal texts of all the anti-homosexuality legislations reflect in the subsequent impacts they have on subjects. This is because systematic forms of oppression work mostly through powerful political institution to produce adverse effects on those who are directly subjected to it, while leaving lasting effects on other aspects of society

(religious, educational and cultural etcetera). To demonstrate this, the accounts of traditional

Nigerian society in which homosexuality appeared acceptable witnessed wide tolerance which was similar to the first and second regulatory regimes (folds) which clearly deploys its own judicial systems in punishing defaulters. Similar impacts have hardly been felt since the 2013 SSMPA which seem to have transformed most Nigerians into homophobic citizens who take laws into their hands and administer punishments in ways they deem fit on homosexuals (Oduah, 2014).

In the same vein, the second paragraph of the SSMPA proved useful to conclude that unlike previous anti-homosexuality legislations of the first and second folds, the third fold implicates all state institutions as well as private heterosexual individuals in Nigeria while thrusting on them enforce a sense of duty thus:

“There shall also be a jail term of 10 years for any person or group of persons that either

witnesses, administers, abets or aids any same-sex marriage; supports the operation,

registration and the sustenance of gay clubs, organizations, societies, meetings or

processions anywhere in Nigeria” (SSMPA, 2013).

Thus, the most recent SSMPA version is far removed from previous and perhaps explicates the new trend of citizens becoming the judge, jury and executioners who resort to jungle justice and personally meting out varying degrees of punishments and physical torture on homosexuals themselves without recourse to due process while the requisite state legal institutions act complicit by doing nothing. For instance, barely a month after the SSMPA was signed into law in 2013, the first widespread series of homophobic attacks took place in a remote town close to the Nigerian

Capital (Federal Capital Territory). Several reports of extreme house-to-house raids for several midnights occurred whereby suspected or real homosexuals were dragged out, stripped and beaten with weapons (such as sticks spiked with nails, whips, wires and broken furniture) amidst chants that they were cleansing the community of gays and working for Jonathan (Human Rights Watch,

2016). To this, White (2013) argues that since the SSMPA, hostility has since been exacerbated the attendant attitudes against real or imagined homosexuals; ranging from indifference/apathy, outright discriminations, to attacks of various forms etc.

Unfortunately, whereas such jungle justice would have been resisted by relevant state institutions in the past, no person was prosecuted or convicted which shows strong complicity and willingness of the Nigerian state in administering the SSMPA through both judicial and extra- judicial alternatives present in the penal texts. Further political statements from popular public figures in respective regions seem to have exacerbated homophobia. Endong (2016) cites similar cases in Nigeria and few other African spaces which seem to have resulted in adverse consequences for homosexual populations throughout these contexts due to how these popular political leaders wield massive authority on their subjects. First, is the immediate past President

Mugabe of Zimbabwe who employed spiteful use of “dogs” and “pigs” to describe homosexuals in a radio interview in 2015.

A similar case from Gambia was the reference to queer communities as “vermins and mosquitoes” in 2014 by former president Jammeh (Endong, 2016: 140). The author also reports same of the following erstwhile President and political leaders; Sam Nujoma of Namibia who equated homosexual acts as “gruesome inhuman perversion that should be uprooted from

Namibia”; former President Mills referenced “homosexuality as antithetical force against core cultural values of Ghana" while vowing never to support any attempt in Ghana to legalize it, as well as similar versions of public utterances by current presidents; Cameroonian Biya and his

Ugandan counterpart - Museveni. Specifically, popular Nigerian political and religious leaders like Senators Yerima and Lawan, also theb popular Anglican primate and other clerics since the late

2000s have been reported to also openly use spiteful words against homosexual acts while exhorting the masses to denounce suspected homosexuals within their communities, as well as promptly reporting them to the cops (Corina, 2012; Endong, 2016).

The foregoing substantiates why similar legislative recklessness was undertaken beyond the Nigeria borders when the Nigerian government during the 5th UN General Assembly’s Fifth

Committee on 24th March 2015 voted in favor of a Russian draft against same-sex couples. Human

Rights Watch (2016) posits that the support for the 2015 Russian draft which later failed in the UN was rooted in Nigeria’s persistent position to justify its 2013 SSMPA. Same justification subsequently led Nigeria into also rejecting the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) which recommended decriminalization of homosexuality, and to that end, it driveled the universal

(global) international, regional and local levels legislations geared towards protecting the rights the dignity of all human persons irrespective of their gender, age, race, sexual orientation among other factors.

Consequently, since homophobia at the apex of society through the political structure can trigger undue discrimination, hate and outright attacks on homosexual populations, especially in the light of homophobic state policies (SSMPA). Such SSMPA legislation can be adjudged an executive recklessness within the political sphere as the coordinating institution in Nigeria, due to how it could through its homophobic legislation, officially connect and validate those already existing in subtle ways across cultural and religious spheres in the society.

Concluding Reflections: Prospects for Change

Following from the assessing the nature, structures, strategies and impacts of Nigeria’s regulatory regimes on consensual homosexual relationships and influence on repressing sexual identities, the strong links it holds for both the criminalized minoritized homosexual populations and the rest of Nigeria has been devastating. The variegated scholarly inquiry who treat these three- fold regulatory regimes through legislations as incongruent parts in literature has not been beneficial. This justifies the need to reassess the rhetoric of discourse while adopting a holistic approach which would unite these regimes of homogeneous homosexuality legislations and map their parallel marginalizing and oppressive outcomes to foster the common ground needed to revolutionize the current homophobic Nigerian milieu.

Current issues of homosexuality rights and freedom of homosexuality populations in

Nigeria which has been addressed mainly because of cultural and religious beliefs, values and practices should move beyond such usual strictures into the domains of centralized state-sponsored regulatory regimes. The three-fold discourse of this essay has highlighted strong linkers in terms of similarities in penal codes, structures and strategies of administration, as well established the nature of their changing impacts with a more nuanced approach on how actively engaging citizens’ sense of duty to foster the real to fulfil political obligations.

Hence, the discourse built a collapsible argument on the role of the Nigerian state and non- state actors which has previously been in the grey areas of literature on the repressive inclinations of these joint structures. Finally, the UN legislative provisions and Call to Action which intended to protect homosexuals against abuse across member-nations as mentioned earlier appear have been grossly insufficient in its administration across member nations, especially since the gradual homophobia epidemic spreading across few non-western contexts. The foregoing loophole could be explored and supplemented with explicit scholarly contributions on the perceptions and responses to the anti-homosexuality legislations as it relates to the effects on minoritized LGBTQ persons in a bid to assuage societal moral sensibilities in a collective way. Success stories on the rights of LGBTQ persons from countries of SA,

Mozambique, Seychelles among a few other African nations where there are no criminalizing legislations can also be better amplified in literature as feasible blueprints for current hostile homophobic environments.

References

Ajayi-Lowo, E.O. (2018). The Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act in Nigeria: A Critique of Body Policing. In Trier- Bieniek, A. (Ed.). The politics of Gender, Brill 2018. Ajibade, G. O. (2013). Same-Sex Relationships in Yorùbá Culture and Orature, Journal of Homosexuality, 60(7): 965-983. Akinwotu, E. (May 30, 2018). Blackmail, prejudice and persecution: gay rights in Nigeria. Inside. Retrieved April 20, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2018/mar/30/blackmail-prejudice-persecution-gay-rights-nigeria Allen, S. H., & Mendez, S. N. (2018). Hegemonic heteronormativity: Toward a new era of queer family theory. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 10(1), 70-86. Barnecka, J., Karp, K., & Lollike, M. (2005). Homosexuality. Roskilde University. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge. Carroll, A. & Itaborahy, L. P. (2015). The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA). State Sponsored Homophobia. Retrieved April 17 2019, from http://old.ilga.org/Statehomophobia/ILGA_State_Sponsored_Homophobia_2015.pdf Corina, M. (2008). Nigeria’s Anti-Homosexual Laws Also Apply to Tourists, Says Government. Retrieved April 30, 2019, from http://global.christianpost.com/news/nigerias-anti- homosexual-laws-also-apply-to-tourists-saysgovt-64738/ Deveaux, M. 1994. "Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault." Feminist Studies, 20:223-245. Endong, F. (2016). LGBT rights movement in Africa and the myth of the Whiteman's superiority. Journal of Globalization Studies, 1: 55-56. Engelke, M. (1999). ‘“We wondered what human rights he was talking about”: Human rights, homosexuality, and the Zimbabwe International Book Fair’, Critique of Anthropology 19 (3): 289–314. Epprecht, M. (2013) Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa: Rethinking homophobia and Forging Resistance. Zed Books, London. Epprecht, M. & Egya, S. E. (2011). Teaching about homosexualities to Nigerian university students: a report from the field. Gender and Education, 23:4, 367-383. Epprecht, M. (2009). Sexuality, African history. American Historical Review, 114(5), 1258–1272. Epprecht, M. (2006). Bisexuality and the Politics of Normal in African Ethnography. Anthropologica 48(2): 187–201. Eribon, D. (2001). Michel Foucault's histories of sexuality. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 7(1), 31–86. Foucault, M. (1992) (1984). The History of Sexuality. Volume 2: An Introduction. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge New York: Pantheon. GALZ (2008). Unspoken facts: A history of homosexualities in Africa. Harare: Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. Halperin, D. (1990). One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Routledge. Human Rights Watch (2015). "Nigeria." World Report 2015: Events of 2014. (Retrieved April 30, 2019, from http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/nigeria Human Rights Watch (2008). This Alien Legacy: The Origins of "Sodomy" Laws in British Colonialism. Retrieved April 17, 2019, from https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/17/alien-legacy/origins-sodomy-laws-british- colonialism Ilesanmi, Yemisi (2013). Freedom to Love for all: Homosexuality is not Un-African. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

Irazábal, C., & Huerta, C. (2016). Intersectionality and planning at the margins: LGBTQ youth of color in New York. Gender, Place & Culture, 23(5): 714-732. Karskens, M. (2009). Biopower: A Slip of the Polemical Mind in A Foucault for the 21st Century, In, Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millenium. Binkley, S. & Capetillo, J. (Eds.). UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lasio, Diego & Serri, Francesco & Ibba, Isabella & de Oliveira, Joao Manuel. (2018). Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Homonormative Discourses of LGBTQ Activists About Lesbian and Gay Parenting. Journal of Homosexuality. 10.1080/00918369.2018.1493252. Laws of The Federation of Nigeria (LFN), 1999 - 2016 Enactments. Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) Commencement, January 7, 2014. Retrieved May 20, 2019, from:https://www.Lawnigeria.Com/Lawsofthefederation/Same-Sex-Marriage- Prohibition-Act,-2014.html Lehrman, N. (2005). Homosexuality: Some Neglected Considerations. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 10(3): 80-83. Mbembe, A. (2003). “Necropolitics”. Public Culture. 15 (1): 11–40. McKay, T. & Angotti, N. (2016). Ready Rhetorics: Political Homophobia and Activist Discourses in Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda. Qualitative Sociology 39: 397–420. Nell, M. & Shapiro, J. (2013). Resilience amidst adversity: Being Gay and African in the New Century. n.p.: The Atlantic Philanthropies and the OTHER Foundation. Nossiter, A. (February 8. 2014). Nigeria Tries to “Sanitize” itself of Gays. The New York Times, Retrieved December 18, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/0.9/world/africa/nigeria-uses-law-and-whip-to- sanitize-gays.html Oduah, C. (January 25, 2014). Gay Nigerians targeted as “un-African”. Aljazeera News US & Canada. Retrieved April 10, 2019, from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/gay-nigerians-targeted-as-un- african-2014125143518184415.html Ostein, P . (2007). Sharia Implementation in Northern Nigeria 1999-2006: A Sourcebook. Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books Limited. Volume IV, chapter 4, part III. Oswald, R.M., Blume, L.B., & Marks, S.R. (2005). Decentering heteronormativity: A model for family studies (p. 143-165). In Bengston, V., Acock, A., Allen, K., Dilworth-Anderson, P. & Klein, D. (Eds.) Sourcebook of family theory and research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Otunba, G. (2014). Enhancing LGBT Rights in Africa: A case study of Nigeria (Dissertation). Retrieved April 20, 2019, from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva- 229491/div Pew Research Center (27 May 2014). The Global Divide on Homosexuality. Retrieved April 17, 2019, from http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/05/Pew-Global-Attitudes- Homosexuality-Report-REVISED-MAY-27-2014.pdf Rifkin, M. (2014). “Making Peoples into Populations: The Racial Limits of Tribal Sovereignty,” Theorizing Native Studies, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 149-187. Sander, A.J.G. (1997). Homosexuality and the law: A gay revolution in South Africa. Journal of African Law, 41(1):100–108. Spitzer, R. L. (1973): A proposal About Homosexuality and the APA Nomenclature: Homosexuality as One Form of Sexual Behaviour and Sexual Orientation Disturbance as a Psychiatric Disorder, APA Document Reference No. 730008, 6th Printing, page 44. Tamale, S. (2008). Review of Tommy boys, lesbian men and ancestral wives: Female same-sex practices in Africa. Feminist Africa, 11, 135–138. TIERs - The Initiative for Equal Rights (April 24, 2015). "Nigeria LGBT Community Discover a Safe Space." Retrieved May 15, 2019, from http://www.theinitiativeforequalrights.org/nigeria-lgbt-community-discover-a-safe-space/ Weinberg. G. (1972). Society and the healthy homosexual. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. White, C. M. (2013) ‘Human Rights and the Impact of Criminalization: Legalizing Homophobia in Jamaica, Nigeria, and Uganda’, Law School Student Scholarship, Paper 325. Retrieved May 20, 2019, from http://scholarship.shu.edu/student_scholarship/325