Rights Vs. Culture: Nigeria’s LGBT Question

 

How Culture, Politics and Law Deny LGBT Humanity in Nigeria

IN Nigeria, debates about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are seldom abstract. They determine whether millions can live openly, access health care, raise families, join civil society or even avoid arrest. This investigation traces why, despite global shifts toward recognition, Nigeria’s social, political and legal systems continue to render LGBT lives precarious — and why that outcome is neither inevitable nor inevitable-free from historical roots and policy choices.

From Prejudice to Penal Code: The Legal Architecture of Exclusion

The Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2014 — popularly labelled “jail the gays” — crystallised Nigeria’s hostility into law. It outlaws same-sex unions, criminalises public advocacy and prescribes long prison terms for those who “aid and abet.” In many northern states, Sharia provisions impose even harsher penalties. The result is a legal environment that does more than prohibit behaviour: it legitimates social exclusion, police profiling and extortion, while discouraging victims from reporting violence.

That legal posture has international consequences. Nigeria’s domestic statutes collide with global human rights norms that protect sexual orientation and gender identity from discrimination. Yet political leaders domestically have little incentive to align with global norms: anti-LGBT positions play well with religious constituencies, and politicians exploit homophobia to score electoral points.

Culture, Religion and the Social Production of “Otherness”

Social rejection of LGBT people in Nigeria is not solely the product of narrow politics. Deeply embedded cultural values — especially pronatalism (the premium placed on reproduction) and conservative family norms — make sexual nonconformity socially costly. Religion amplifies this. Churches and mosques interpret same-sex relations as moral deviance; faith communities form much of the moral climate in which law and politics operate.

This is not simply “traditionalism” versus “modernity.” It is a lived moral economy in which gender roles and family continuity are central to identity and social cohesion. People who visibly deviate become visible targets for humiliation, violence, and forced “cures.”

Coloniality, Modernity and the Historical Backdrop

To understand the present, we must look back. Many of Nigeria’s punitive statutes are colonial legacies, reworked and hardened after independence. The colonial encounter redefined acceptable sexualities: practices framed as “uncivil” were outlawed; “modern” sexual norms were elevated. Contemporary homophobia in Nigeria, therefore, is entangled with colonial legal inheritances and post-colonial reassertions of moral sovereignty. Scholars who study coloniality argue that these frameworks produced hierarchies of “whose humanity counts” — hierarchies that still shape law and public sentiment.

Theory in Practice: Identity, Power and Resistance

Social-psychological theories show identity as a negotiation between the individual (“I”) and societal definitions (“me”). For LGBT Nigerians, that negotiation is hostile; the social “me” often refuses recognition. Feminist and decolonial theorists add another layer: sexuality is bound up with economic, political and patriarchal systems that police bodies and desires. From a Marxist-inspired lens, the suppression of sexual diversity can also be read as part of broader structures of domination embedded in family, state and market relations.

Enforcement, Corruption and Everyday Violence

The law’s deterrent effect is compounded by enforcement practices. Police have been documented using anti-LGBT statutes as tools of extortion and blackmail. Fear of arrest dissuades victims from reporting rape, assault or discrimination; fear of exposure drives people to the margins, where abuse is likelier and remedies less available. NGOs report recurrent cases where the law itself becomes the instrument of abuse.

Exodus and Asylum: The Human Cost

For many LGBT Nigerians, the practical response has been flight. Diasporic communities and asylum applications to South Africa and Europe speak to the human cost of criminalisation: losing homeland, kin networks and economic opportunity. Emigration is not a simple escape; it is an indictment of a polity that denies safety and belonging to its own citizens.

Civil Society and the Fragile Struggle for Rights

Despite repression, a small but persistent ecosystem of rights groups — local NGOs, advocacy collectives and international partners — continue to defend LGBT people’s welfare. They provide health services, legal advice and discreet support. Their work is vital but constrained by the law, limited funding, and security risks. Public opinion polls consistently show high disapproval of LGBT identities; political and religious leaders amplify that sentiment, shrinking civic space for reform.

Politics of Convenience: Why Politicians Keep the Status Quo

Political actors weaponise anti-LGBT sentiment because it is politically inexpensive and electorally profitable. Supporting repressive laws costs little at the ballot box and yields moral capital with conservative voters. The result: rights-expanding reforms stall, while pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities widen. International pressure has limited leverage; for many leaders, domestic legitimation matters more than foreign critique.

What Would Change Look Like?

This is not a call for cultural erasure. Rather, the editorial argument is pragmatic: protecting basic human rights — freedom from violence, access to healthcare, protection from extortion — does not require replacing cultural values. It requires:

• Repealing criminal provisions that punish consensual adult same-sex conduct;

• Ending police practices that use such laws for extortion;

• Strengthening and resourcing NGOs that provide health and legal aid;

• Promoting public education to reduce stigma (health-centred, rights-based messaging);

• Using courts and the international human rights framework to challenge laws incompatible with dignity and equality.

Conclusion: Humanity, Not Conditional Acceptance

Nigeria’s law and dominant moral culture currently treat many LGBT citizens as less than fully human. This is not a natural state of affairs; it is the product of layered choices — colonial legal legacies, religious and cultural gatekeeping, political opportunism and institutional failure. The question “To what extent are we all humans?” is not rhetorical. It is a test of whether the Nigerian state will protect dignity for all its citizens or continue to allow some to live in fear.

Honouring human dignity means confronting uncomfortable histories, revising unjust laws, and investing in the slow work of social transformation. That path will be contested and nonlinear. But if Nigeria is to claim the mantle of modern democracy and human rights, it must begin by asking whom it chooses to protect — and why.