‘He plays with men’: The northern Nigerian women married to husbands living double lives

Image Description: A woman sits on a prayer mat in a dimly lit, clay-walled room, illuminated by a small lantern. Her husband stands behind her, facing the wall, where his shadow splits into two overlapping silhouettes—one masculine, one feminine.

For Fati, who grew up in a conservative Muslim society, the way her husband Ahmadu gesticulated while talking was strange and confusing. Love after marriage wasn’t winding up the way the 20-year-old had expected. Only five months in, she started noticing what she describes as “something odd” about her husband’s mannerisms.

“He spoke in a higher note and walked with his wrist flared sideways.” To her, this behaviour was a stark contrast to the man she knew in their three years of dating.

The first time they met, Fati was 13, and Ahmadu was 20. “I had gone to the market, and Ahmadu was the vendor I went to. He brought fabrics from Kano to sell in Adamawa.” 

At 13, she was immediately smitten by his generosity. “Sometimes, when I went there, he wouldn’t take my money. The way he treated me, the way he dashed me things, I fell in love.”

With the age of consent in Adamawa at 11 years old, Ahmadu and Fati started dating. Fati still lived with her family, so most of their relationship was marked by infrequent, sneaky visits to his shop and, on a few occasions, spending full days together. But she never got to see Ahmadu for more than a couple of hours. Three years later, now married, Fati found herself uncovering parts of her husband. 

She would also notice the odd, hyper-friendly interactions he had with men, but she brushed them off as coincidences until some yan daudu in her village came to gossip.

Ahmadu had flirted with someone’s partner, and to draw blood, the others decided to tell Fati. Unable to recall what they said, all Fati tells me is, “He plays with men.” Later that day, she confronted him when he got home from work. “At first, he lied and claimed to have no idea what I was talking about, but he eventually admitted his wrongs.”

‘Such men are called ‘yan daudun riga’ [shirted yan daudu], meaning they treat daudu—the practice of men acting “like women”—like a shirt that can be put on or taken off at will,’ Rudolf Gaudio, a sociologist who spent time with Daudus, explains in his book ‘Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City’.

Gaudio’s thesis on the daudu community, for which he spent a good portion of time in their community to understand how they lived, notes that certain daudu hid their femininity in public, projecting a more masculine look. Likened to taking off a shirt, daudu riga are men who have, for some time, expressed femininity, then halt them and adopt a more masculine stereotype. While not all Yan Daudu perform the same expression of femininity, makeup, women’s clothes and accessories are, to some degree, worn by most of them, and so a Daudu hanging up his sexuality forfeits these aspects of his identity. 

Though most Yan Daudu don’t wear makeup daily or dress in skirts and blouses, they still have elements of femininity in their appearance that make them easily distinguishable from straight men and masc-presenting queer men that Yan Daudu’s sleep with. They wear kajal (black eyeliner) and scarves, sway their wrists and hips, among other mannerisms considered female. Daudu riga is a reintegration into society that involves putting away their dresses and accessories to adopt an outwardly ‘straight look’.

“I wasn’t happy at all,” Fatima admitted how she felt about the revelation. She had fallen for her husband’s kindness and attention, but when she discovered his truth, she convinced herself to stay. “Later, I calmed down. The way he was taking care of me, I removed it from my heart.” 

But despite the apology, Ahmadu wouldn’t stop sleeping with men. He’s still intimate with his wife, but his meetings at the daudu joint remained the same. And though Fati says he takes good care of her, she never discusses how she truly feels about his affairs.

“The girls are too young; some were not even in school before getting married. That’s why they conform to societal standards much more easily in the north; those girls don’t know better,” says Bintu Bala, a feminist Northern woman advocating for a ban on child marriage. “All they knew were their parents, a trade they were learning, their family and friends and then the man they’re going to marry. They are not emotionally mature for adult relationships.” 

Fati was just one of the many women in her neighbourhood married to a dan daudu. Just around the corner from where she and Ahmadu live with their two children, another woman, Khadija, faced similar problems with her husband.

Khadija, too, was told by some daudus that her husband is a daudu. Unlike Fati, who had prior suspicions, Khadija was in the dark about her husband’s sexuality till one day when some daudus visited her. They told her how often they see her husband, Shuaibu, at a Yan Daudu bar. 

She confronted her husband, to which he said, “He told me one alfa said he should follow men so he can get more money in his business,” she said, trying to refer to sex. “The alfa gave him a potion,” she continues. “So every time before he goes out to sell, he makes sure he follows men outside so that he can sell and make more profit,” she said, repeating his explanation.

Khadija, at the time, had a toddler and was pregnant with another. She and Shuaibu had seen each other through four years of dating and had been married for two, so the news was to her incomprehensible: “Shuaibu sold perfumes, men’s sandals, sheddahs (men’s kaftan), caps, and wristwatches. he did not tell me of financial struggles or mention visiting an Alfa.” 

An alfa, a spiritual man believed to grant good fortune in exchange for sacrifice, is frowned upon by Islam, so Shuaibu’s visit carries religious weight. 

Yan Daudu’s existence dates back to pre-Islam, but recently it has become common for them to marry women for religious reasons. Unlike the older generation that embraced the outcast image and mostly lived as they liked, worshipping bori spirits, most yan daudu today are born muslims and socialised in Islamic society. Their idea of morality and sense of identity are closely interlinked or almost entirely grounded in Quranic doctrines. Internalised ideas of heterosexuality and homosexuality, as prescribed by the Quran, now dictate their sense of identity and push them to align more with straight conservative Hausa men who are considered the more normal or only man to be. As a result, Muslim daudus today see heterosexuality as the norm they should aspire to or live by, despite their obvious sexuality and interest in men.

When Islam started to spread, and intolerance for the Daudu community grew stronger, Daudu slowly started to marry to shield themselves from assault. Joining forces with fellow outcasts and neighbours, bori women—spiritual women who like the worshipped bori and sometimes dealt with same sex relations— yan daudu got into lavender marriages. Both parties saw marriage as a benefit to a better life and acceptance into society, so they had an agreement that worked. In recent years, the bori cult has gone extinct, but the daudu community still roared, and so they started looking towards other women to wear as beards.

“They choose younger women because they are vulnerable and have no experience. It’s sad to see young girls fall for these gimmicks because often the older men go after them to exert control, but because of their society and upbringing, the girls don’t question these forces and merely see them as normal”, Bintu says. 

Even though daudus have found a place in northern society, their wives are unintended targets. Khadija was unwilling to walk the path. “I asked for a divorce. He said no. He admitted fault but refused to let me go.” Khadija said, “he said he will change, but he won’t divorce me.”

Khadija also had no job and only took some small tailoring gigs, which she did from her old manual sewing machine, and her earnings couldn’t do much to support herself, a pregnancy and one child. Shuaibu never let her leave the house beyond running errands, and she had no close support. With almost two years of dating and four years of marriage in the bag, she was tethered. 

Life for a divorced Hausa woman was brutal, and so Khadija stayed—clinging to the promise that he wouldn’t do it again. Two years later, she still clings to the belief that her husband’s transgression was nothing more than a fleeting mistake, a lapse influenced by bad company. A phase that ended as abruptly as it began. Shuaibu, once again, had become a different person overnight.

“He changed his behaviour as a Yan Daudu,” she says. “When he was still following men, he never gave me time, never cared about being intimate with me. But now, I’ve seen changes. Even the people who once warned me about him have stopped coming.” To Khadija, her husband is innocent—a victim of deception, led astray by false prophets. And since Shuaibu now moves through their home like the man she first fell for, she believes him.

But outside their walls, the truth lingers. “Her husband still acts like that,” says Mariam, Khadija’s neighbour, another woman married to a Dan Daudu. “My husband still sees Shaubu in their location.”

Gaudio observed that it’s easy for Daudus to shift between identities; they are only feminine in certain spaces—among friends, in trusted company, or at parties. His book discusses a man who dropped his daudu identity to fit into a new job, “when he was still selling kolanut, this man both was and was not a dan daudu. His gender identifications varied depending on where he was, who he was with, and the things he was doing at any given time.”

Daudus don’t see their sexuality as an identity or cross-dressing as a fixed part of who they are, but rather as something they do, which may contribute to their easy slip between masculinity and femininity. Their fluidity is not about self-expression but about adaptation.

Whether Yan Daudu is a performance of two identities is unclear, but what is obvious is the freedom they have to explore both, which is unfair when compared to their wives’ experiences. Married Daudus in Gaudio’s research, and Adamu spoke of their wives as possessions rather than partners, as though marriage were a checkpoint in life rather than a bond built on love. They describe marriage as an inevitable milestone, not something they deeply desired. For women like Khadija, who got married for love, the realization of their husband’s sexuality comes as a heartbreak.

Unlike Khadija and Fati, Mariam had never been in the dark. Her marriage was not built on illusion but on something else entirely. “I know he sleeps with men. I knew he was into men before I married him.” Mariam and her husband—a man who sells dabino (dates) and women’s perfume—had been married for six years, but their history stretched much further since childhood. “When I met him, he was frying yam. I went to buy some, and we started talking. He liked me, and I liked him.”

They attended the same primary school, then secondary school, growing closer over the years. From the start, Mariam sensed something different about him. “He had four siblings and was the only boy growing up among women,” she recalls, hinting at the common belief that boys raised around women often become Yan Daudu.

And she wasn’t wrong. Her husband was always drawn to the company of women. He shared their interests, spent time with his sisters and extended family, and moved with the signature pep of a Yan Daudu: the walk, the hand gestures, and the way he spoke. But none of that mattered to Mariam.

By their late teens, they had started dating. “We did everything together—cooked together, did business together.” He never hid who he was. He had no intention of changing, and Mariam accepted that. They got married. After five years together, now six years into marriage, she remains content in their relationship. “Our life is normal, and I don’t have a problem with him.”

She loves her husband, but sometimes she craves the same connection he shares with others. Since her husband was always open about himself, he’s a lot less intimate with Mariam. “I feel jealous sometimes, but I don’t think about it.”

Daudus can be intimate with women, but it’s a different, less interesting feeling. “A man can have sex with a woman, but it’s not the same pleasure,” Gaudio said. At the end, Yan Daudu’s wives bear the weight of these marriages. They aren’t allowed to leave the house without their husband’s permission, while their husbands move between identities, living double lives on their own terms. Yan Daudu face discrimination, and the women they marry have become unintended casualties of society’s disdain, spending their lives with partners who will never fully be theirs.

 

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

Illustrated by: Rex Opara