“We all deserve love”: Queer Nigerians on celebrating Valentine’s day

Valentine’s Day is the global day of love, on which lovers celebrate each other over food and flamboyant gift-giving. However, it has also had strong heteronormative undertones — from brands whose marketing strategies are tailored towards cis-gendered people and romantic opposite-sex partners to ‘his or hers’ gift packages. The interests of queer partners are, by default, excluded from this day. 

But Chisom and his current boyfriend will be celebrating their first valentine this year, daring to recognize their love in Nigeria, a country that criminalises it.  

“We are both people who aren’t in the closet so from calling me ‘baby’ while we are outside, hugging and holding me, [to] kissing me on the cheeks, the public display of affection is always great,” says Chisom, adding that “The celebration of love is important to queer people because we all deserve love. At the end of the day, we fall in love just like every other person.”

Queer love is not only erased from the itinerary of Valentine’s Day vendors, but it is also not recognized by the Nigerian state and the majority of the people who live in the country. With the Same-Sex Marriage [Prohibition] Act 2013 [SSMPA], cultural biases, religious teachings and beliefs, LGBTQIA+ persons living in the country have had to develop connections and express their love and desire in secrecy. 

Laws like the SSMPA not only criminalize same-sex marriage but also condemn the public display of affection between people of the same gender; this makes it acceptable, in the eyes of heterosexual Nigerians, for queer persons to live in fear as they constantly face harassment, violation and discrimination.

Over the years, queer Nigerians have experienced various degrees of hostility from the general public, which intensified after the passing of the SSMPA, making state and non-state actors executioners of justice. Due to this situation, there is only so much queer couples can do in public and little they can get away with. 

Earlier in their relationship, Ahunna* and her girlfriend often met up in a hotel as both of them still lived with their parents at that time. While checking out one morning, the receptionist hinted at the fact that she was aware of the nature of their relationship.

“You know when somebody is giving you that knowing look of I know where you are coming from and I know what you have been doing, that’s when I figured that I can’t be here anymore, so we had to keep switching hotels,” Ahunna tells Minority Africa. 

For people like Ahunna whose partner is as feminine-presenting as herself, the stares and questions are a bit reduced, unlike situations where it is two gay men or where a partner is masculine-presenting and another is feminine-presenting, which could raise a lot of speculations concerning their sexuality. 

“Because my partner and I are both feminine, this isn’t really hard but it is still a challenge because there is still only so much we can get away with in public,” says Ahunna. “In the club when it’s dark and everyone is tipsy, we get away with a lot of things [but] in a restaurant or a park, [we] can’t.”

But one of the many joys of Valentine’s Day is being able to show off your partner and have unhinged moments of affection. “It’s hard, you know, to be able to not express love for your partner, especially during [Valentine’s Day] when everybody is loved up,” Ahunna shares. This type of feeling is not out of place for queer couples, whether it is the day of celebrating love or not. However, Ahunna and her partner still find ways to show their love. In their first year together, they exchanged gifts on Valentine’s Day and proceeded to meet at a hotel because public meetings were almost impossible. However, this year, she doesn’t know what her partner has planned, even though she has been asked to clear her schedule. 

As the mood for the season edges closer, social media is awash with gift packages and vendors getting ready for the day. For Chisom, the fact that most of the gift items are catered to heterosexual couples doesn’t make celebrating Valentine’s Day easier, but he tries not to think about it. 

“I mean, I was looking at gift ideas and boxes and they were all heterosexual and honestly kind of meaningless because they are often generic and are almost always about gifts that do not make sense to me,” he says. “They are always something –  from money to flowers to other things that make you realise that these gift boxes are about the grand gestures with no thought behind them.”

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Ahunna, who is in the third year of her relationship, shares this sentiment and doesn’t rely on packages from vendors. “I don’t take cognizance of ‘his and hers’ boxes because I am a different type of gifter; I like to curate intentional gifts,” she says. “There is no vendor that knows my partner more than me, so I don’t really concern myself with all those vendors.”

As the culture of homophobia still prevails within the country, queer lovers push through, determined to let love win no matter what. “Every day, my boyfriend expresses his love in the open regardless of what other people think because, for him, people will be fine,” Chisom says. “At the end of the day, we are in love and it is our love that matters. And while I used to have anxiety about that because of society, I also do the same and that’s not going to take a back seat anytime.” 

Although gay couples in Nigeria cannot express their love as publicly as heterosexual couples can (and do), Ahunna says it doesn’t stifle her expression of love.“Valentine’s Day is not owned by heterosexual couples,” she says. “Yes, they dominate a lot of spaces, right? But it doesn’t mean that they own the day. Valentine’s day is lovers’ day and if your lover is another woman like you or another man like you, please go ahead and celebrate with them.”

*Ahunna’s name was changed to protect her identity. 

Edited by Uzoma Ihejirika.