“We look out for one another”: Queer, Hausa, and Woman in Nigeria

TW: This article contains descriptions of suicide. 

Maryam remembers watching her girlfriend overdose.

It was 2018, and 24-year-old Maryam and her girlfriend of two years, Safiya, had agreed to come out to their Hausa families. The couple had met in Zamfara State when they were both students at Federal University, Gusau. After school, they stayed back in the city and eventually moved in together.

Coming out didn’t go well for either of them but Safiya took a harder hit. Her family publicly disowned her and informed her homophobic employer, who terminated her contract. In the blink of an eye, she lost both her job and her family. This triggered a depression that led her down a path of alcohol and drugs until Safiya overdosed one day, causing convulsions and prompting Maryam to take her to the hospital.

She was declared dead on arrival.

“Safi was very beautiful and cheerful; she was always full of life,” says Maryam. “I felt very guilty [because] I was the one who pressured her to come out; I didn’t know it would go this way. I try not to think about it so much or blame myself but sometimes, it’s hard not to.”

For queer northern women like Maryam and Safiya, acceptance by family is often difficult. Found predominantly in northern Nigeria, the Hausa people are one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups. They have strong cultural and religious values that hinge on strict gender roles.

Although now largely homophobic, the Hausa society did not always have homophobia rooted in its culture. Queer people in the north – particularly queer men – were at some point historically recognised. Whilst this recognition did not equate to acceptance, there was a general sense of tolerance for their ‘lifestyle.’

On the other hand, queer women were much less documented. While it’s easy to attribute this to their nonexistence, another queer woman, Martha, told Minority Africa she believes that even in the era of tolerance, there was no place for women to be as openly queer as their male counterparts.

Having no place in Hausa society in the past and present, queer Hausa women are forced to hide and navigate multiple intersecting identities, trying to balance their sexual orientation with religion and ethnicity.

“After Safi’s death, I felt a lot of emotions, but the strongest was anger,” Maryam reveals. “I was so angry. I was angry at her family, at mine and at every older Hausa person I came across. Everything they did repulsed me.” 

At that point, she saw older Hausa people as an extension of her parents and their conservative views; they represented everything she hated about the culture.

“Safi’s family never came for the funeral. I reached out, but they never came,” Maryam continues. “Their daughter was no more, but they did not care. I had a lot of anger and resentment for my own culture. I hated being Hausa. To me, it felt like Yoruba and Igbo people would still love their child, but ours didn’t. Their love for us was conditional. I’m older now and I know that this is relative but then, I was angry.” 

In a bid to escape her identity and reinvent herself, she moved to Lagos barely months after Safiya’s passing. She also spiralled into an identity crisis and later discovered herself through friends and therapy. Family, on the other hand, remained a distant part of her life that she never reconciled with. Even though she was not disowned by her parents, they refuse to talk to her unless she changes her sexuality.

 “They don’t want me to bring shame to them so I was excommunicated, but I understand. I don’t even wish to talk to them, so it’s fine.”

Amidst the difficulty of coming out to conservative Hausa parents, there are some people fortunate to have parents who embrace them. 

“How my dad spoke to me and loved me when I came out to him wasn’t what I expected,” Aisha, a bisexual gender nonconformist from Kogi State, recounts. “I expected backlash and trauma, but I didn’t get that from my dad.” 

Even though she discovered her sexuality at a young age, Aisha was always conservative in her beliefs; tradition and religion shaped her life and self-image. In trying to merge her ethnic and sexual identities, Aisha struggled with self-confidence and tried to conform to heteronormative expectations and gender ideals; this eventually led to self-hatred and internalised homophobia.

 “I wasn’t happy that my religion did not accept who I was,” she says, explaining how difficult it was to navigate through those times. She recounted conducting some research and not finding anything pointing to homosexuality being a sin, even though the prevailing argument among Islamic scholars is that it is.

For Aisha, the journey to acceptance and self-discovery began at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. 

“I had the agency to decide what I wanted, whom I wanted and in what terms.” 

With this in mind, she cut her hair, removed her hijab and began dressing differently.

Just like Aisha, Martha, a Hausa lesbian who grew up in a strict Christian household, fully explored her sexuality in university. But unlike Aisha, the major conflict Martha faced as a queer woman was not religion; it revolved around reconciling her queer identity with societal struggles at the American University of Nigeria in Yola. 

“It was shortly after I discovered my sexuality that they passed the SSMPA,” she says. “It was a point of concern as to how I would live freely if queer people were criminalised in the country.”

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Passed in 2014, the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA), criminalises homosexuality and any form of sexual identity and orientation against heterosexuality. It limits the rights of queer people and inadvertently gives civilians the authority to mete out punishments against them.

This made Martha not only be scared of her family’s reaction to her queerness, but society’s as well. She has come out to her siblings, but can’t bring herself to do so to her parents because of their strict religious background. 

“I know they want my safety and well-being and I know they wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, but I can’t say I believe that one hundred percent.”

For Aisha, despite her father being accepting, her mother is not. “My mum found out in 2019, and it wasn’t a good experience,” she says. “It was blackmail after blackmail, tears, and prayers. It was crazy, but my dad encouraged me and gave me strength.” 

Aisha’s journey towards self-acceptance as a sexual minority in a conservative society had its challenges. In the early years after discovering her sexuality, she was very lonely. 

Aisha eventually found solace in a Chinese dating app for lesbians.

 “I joined the app to feel like I was not alone.” With the app, she found a friend, whose friendship was so dear to her she referred to it as “pure.” 

This friendship would eventually help her discover the LGBTQ+ community in northern Nigeria, where she formed relationships and found her tribe. 

“Before I knew it, they invited me to LGBTQ parties in Abuja. I would leave Zaria, pack my bags and get on the road. It was an amazing time,” she says. 

“I attended anniversaries of lesbian couples and became really hopeful. I started relationships of my own, made good friends, and realised that within the LGBTQ community, most of the time, we all look out for one another.”

Edited or Reviewed by: Samuel Banjoko, K.S, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.