All lives matter in Nigeria, except Queer lives
- Queer people have been told they are a distraction to the #EndSARS movement, why do we always have to postpone our liberation?
Over the last two weeks, Nigerians gathered en masse nationwide to protest against a rogue policing unit, the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which has a history of extra-judicial killings, kidnappings, and robberies.
As these protests progressed, I decided to join in. While part of the #ENDSARS protest in Enugu, Nigeria, my friend and I were told to not hoist our Queer Lives Matter placards so as not to cause a distraction.
To provoke a reaction, a boy started mimicking the gestures of another effeminate friend of mine who was also protesting. When we ignored him, he grabbed my friend and it almost led to a physical altercation.
I am a gay man who has faced oppression and homophobia from the first day I accepted myself and decided to live my truth. My very religious family made me question my sanity and feel like a sore toe.
As opposed to feeling safe around them, I felt the most anxious and undeserving and I had one self-harm episode. I decided to break the vicious cycle recently and came out to them. It wasn’t pleasant and in the end, I had to leave home and start my life afresh someplace else.
My fight against institutionalized homophobia stems from my victory over my family.
There is an unwritten agreement that the #ENDSARS movement and protests are personal to all; we seem to agree that each person’s experience with SARS is different from the other and just as valid.
Unfortunately, in this personalization, the LGBTQIAP+ community, it appears, has been exempted. What we, as persons in the community, have seen through the protests is Nigerians screaming for justice and simultaneously silencing others asking for the same.
Before the current spiral of events with the #EndSARS movement, Matthew Blaise, a queer rights activist, was arrested by the police on suspicion of looking ‘gay’. He was taken to their station where they intimidated him and threatened to physically assault him. Matthew was released hours later, after being extorted and harassed.
They assumed he was gay from his looks and mannerisms. He was threatened with the 14 years imprisonment that the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition ACT (SSMPA) of Nigeria carries. There was no proof that he was queer, just a presumption. Like everybody else who has been brutalized by the deadly unit, Matthew was summarily convicted of a crime and had to pay his way out.
Matthew’s case is not an isolated incident. In 2018, 57 men were arrested at a birthday party in Egbeda, Lagos State. They were accused of being in a queer gathering.
In Nigeria, the suspicion of being queer is almost as deadly as having committed a felony.
Several SARS victims have complained about being wrongly profiled as criminals because of their hairstyles, gadgets, and driving flashy cars among other reasons.
In the same vein, LGBTQIAP+ Nigerians are sharing their experience with this exact unit, how they have been arrested for their looks and mannerisms, for having queer content on their phones, and yet our truth is met with hostility.
We are told by the Nigerians who we link hands with and fight with side by side that this is not our fight and that this is not the right time to demand that our voices be heard.
To quote James Baldwin, “You always told me it takes time. It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brothers’ and my sisters’ time. My nieces and my nephews’ time. How much time do you want for your ‘progress’?”
The idea that queer people always have to postpone their liberation is problematic for several reasons. It implies that any form of oppression is okay and that injustice is tolerable. It also is ambiguous: there is no better day to fight for queer liberation than today and right now.
As much as being told to “wait for my time,” hurts, I know from history that it is not the first time a community has been told to wait for their time so as not to “distract” the movement.
Bayard Rustin, who was very instrumental to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, was asked to “take a step back” because the movement was not comfortable with his being an openly gay man and because they felt it was not his time.
They wanted Rustin’s support in the fight for Black liberation but also wanted to distance themselves from queerness as much as possible.
At the Abuja #ENDSARS protests, queer protesters were mobbed for carrying placards indicating that their lives matter too. If the heterosexual man and woman’s life matters, why should queer people suspend the fight for their own life? It is appalling to see how during a struggle against oppression, Nigerians still find the time and energy to oppress others.
When I returned home after the protest, I went to the Facebook page of one of the photographers that were present. I saw pictures of myself holding #EndSARS placards but none of those moments wherein I held #Queerlivesmatter placards were captured. The silencing was loud and deliberate.
There is no true progress until we understand that justice is all-encompassing. Queer lives, like the lives of others, have been lost to police brutality. In light of that fact, queer people should have a voice in fighting an institution that punishes them extrajudicially.
Despite the silencing, mobbing, and bullying, queer Nigerians have continued to make statements across the country to remind the world that we are here. Through contributions by queer folks and allies within and outside the country, queer activists and leaders have provided feeding, transportation, housing, and security for protesters.
There is an overwhelming sense that even if Nigerians do not show up for us, we will always show up for ourselves. Perhaps, that is enough.
