Boys Like Us: A YouTube series offers a different portrait of queer life in Nigeria

Image Description: Four people standing closely together against a warm yellow background with soft, wavy patterns. One person wears a green shirt with a stethoscope, another wears a gray tank top, a third wears a pink robe, and the fourth wears a dark suit with a red tie. The figures appear posed like a group portrait.

What does it mean to be queer in Nigeria in the 2020s? 

Despite the increase in documenting queer experiences, there remains very little context for the lived, everyday realities of queer Nigerians. What we know of queerness in Nigeria often arrives through partial lenses: scant research into pre-colonial histories, the exaggerated caricatures of 2000s Nollywood, and, more recently, films and writings approached through social justice, persecution, and activism.

None of these, on their own, show the full spectrum: the ups and downs, the friendships and fallouts, the domestic routines and private negotiations that shape queer Nigerian life. But what happens when queer stories are told not as statements or symbols, but simply as life?

Boys Like Us, a YouTube series by a small team of Nigerian filmmakers—led by Kamisi Adebisi, the creator and writer; Precious Harry, the producer; and Abiodun Udom, director—offers one answer. Across four episodes, the series follows four gay friends—Mofe (Kem-Ajieh Ikechukwu), Diamond (Oscar Chihurumnanya), Edible (Bobby Okoye), and Frank (Leopatrick Nnubia)—who live together in Lagos, as their fragile lives begin to unravel over the course of a single weekend.

A surprise party for one of the lead characters spirals, leaving the friends battling homelessness, material loss, and betrayal. 

The inciting incident feels almost playful at first. The friends throw a surprise party for Frank, who has just received a promotion at work. Edible, eager to impress, invites strippers. The night quickly unravels. The guests turn out to be kito; they drug the men, rob them, and lock them in. What follows is not just material loss, but emotional rupture: blame, mistrust, financial strain, and the slow fracturing of a shared home.

Around this central event, other storylines unfold. One character navigates the ache of a long-distance relationship, while an unexpected romance begins to bloom closer to home. Another remains entangled in an abusive sugar-daddy arrangement, struggling to recognise violence cloaked in the language of provision and control. Housing insecurity looms. Pride collides with vulnerability. The conflicts are personal, not didactic. They feel lived-in.

For Udom, that ordinariness was deliberate. “Nollywood has a tendency to portray queer characters as dramatic, as overzealous, as doing too much,” he says. “Boys Like Us is a more nuanced representation that allowed me to explore what being queer means in Nigeria in 2025.”

Queer characters in older Nollywood films often served as moral warnings, their flamboyance exaggerated and their story arcs designed to end in repentance or ridicule. More recent films, including Ìfé (2020), have pushed back with tenderness and political clarity. Yet even those projects have faced institutional resistance. When Ìfé was first submitted for classification, the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) declined to approve it for theatrical release, effectively barring it from Nigerian cinemas. That decision unfolded within the broader shadow of the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (SSMPA), which criminalises same-sex relationships and public displays of same-sex affection. 

Precious Harry recalls the attention Ìfé received: “There was the Nigerian film board banning it when it was released,” she says, noting the broader climate of homophobia in the industry. Queer creators must navigate distribution carefully; online platforms like YouTube have become essential because they bypass traditional gatekeepers. “We could just make the films. Upload it by yourself, and it will hit your target audience as much as you want,” Harry explains. 

Yet, even digital platforms do not erase the social and professional risks, from securing locations, to hesitant investors,  to actors and crew members fearful of reputational damage, and precarious distribution. Stories are scrutinised not only for artistic merit but for perceived moral threat.

Harry is blunt about the industry context. “There is homophobia in Nollywood,” she says. “You can pretend there isn’t, but it’s there. People will smile with you on set and then tell you quietly that this kind of film will destroy your career.”

Creating a safe space on set is critical, she adds: “I vet my crew very personally. I make sure that the people I work with, one, understand the work that I do. Two, they are very professional. Three, they are not homophobic. Some people would even tell me, ‘Oh, I don’t care about gay rights, I just want to make my money.’ I don’t employ people who tell me that.” 

This approach shaped the production of Boys Like Us, allowing the actors and crew to work confidently within an environment of trust. “When we finished the film, we were hugging each other. We were just hugging. There was a real sense of community that we built with that film,” Harry says.

In that context, YouTube was not just a stylistic choice; it was a survival strategy.

“Usually we’re used to queer films that criticise queer love,” Harry says. “Make it look like a taboo, like something bad has to happen to the gay person. But with YouTube came the bypass of that middleman.”

Traditional Nollywood distribution relies on cinema chains, marketers, and regulatory approval. Each layer introduces risk. With YouTube, the team retained control. “We didn’t need to get our films through any distributor,” Harry explains. “You make the film, upload it yourself, and it hits your target audience at the same time.”

Udom describes creative freedom in equally direct terms. “The idea of YouTube is point and kill,” he says. “Put your camera here and shoot it. It doesn’t matter how great the lighting is or how terrible the acting is; it’s very story-oriented.” The emphasis shifts from polish to narrative momentum. Dialogue carries weight. Characters breathe. Episodes unfold at a pace closer to a soap opera than a festival feature.

That shift matters. Soap operas have long functioned as mirrors of everyday life—messy and intimate. Boys Like Us adopts that grammar. The camera lingers on arguments about money; it sits with the quiet humiliation of being unable to report a crime because the police might criminalise you instead. It allows its characters to be petty, tender, selfish, and afraid.

Kem-Ajieh Ikechukwu, who plays Mofe, sees the series as filling a representational gap. “We are telling a story about queer characters so that queer audiences can relate to them,” he says. “There are so many queer experiences at different points in the film—relationships, betrayal, house-hunting—that are being experienced by queer characters. The right audience would see themselves in these characters.”

The first season has drawn more than 100,000 views. Viewers have asked for a second season; some have offered financial support. Two organisations have expressed interest in backing future episodes. The response underscores a quiet truth: audiences exist. They may not always be visible in cinema attendance figures or festival panels, but they are online, searching, clicking, sharing.

Still, visibility carries risk. Udom worried about the personal cost to his cast. Would families react? Would future employers Google their names? In an industry built on relationships, reputational whispers travel fast. “You think about the actors,” he says. “You think about what this might mean for them outside this project.”

Yet the alternative, silence, carries its own cost. Without projects like Boys Like Us, much of queer Nigerian life remains undocumented except through crisis. The series does not centre activism; it does not frame its characters as symbols. It shows four friends trying to hold on to one another and to a sense of stability in a hostile environment.

That, too, is political.

In foregrounding ordinary messiness, Boys Like Us expands the archive of Nigerian cinema. It demonstrates that YouTube can be more than a repository for skits and short-form comedy; it can be a site of sustained narrative, community-building, and documentation. The platform does not erase the constraints of the SSMPA or the homophobia embedded in the industry. It offers a workaround.

Four friends share an apartment. They celebrate a promotion. They make a reckless decision. They deal with the consequences. Within that simple arc lies a fuller picture of queer life in Nigeria, one that refuses caricature and rejects catastrophe as the only available ending.

Edited/Reviewed by Caleb Okereke, PK Cross, Kenneth Awom, and Uzoma Ihejirika.

Illustrated by: Rex Opara