When queer people speak of how homophobia scuttles their lives at best and threatens or ends it at worse most everyone rolls their eyes at what they consider a needless hyperbole – one many a Nigerian even the most progressive consider an attempt to find an easy way to japa.
Japa is a Nigerian slang for emigration – leaving the country for ‘greener’ pasture, usually in the colonisers’ land or any of their older colonies like Australia, Canada, USA, et al.
Still from Japa by Naira Marley video.
“If you will just shut your mouth and live quietly no one will come for your head,” they say.
“No mother’s son or daughter will face that level of abuse for simply being, you are lying,” they parrot dismissively.
“The world is big enough, you could move if you want to,” they opine from their privileged position.
For those of us who know homophobia firsthand, we know it isn’t just about physical violence at the point of defining oneself. It is many kinds of violations sometimes meted out all at once or dished out in controlled doses over a long and painful period.
Homophobia is a mother you believe loves you suddenly turning spiteful and plain evil in the name of the love that once held you in its warmth because she is terrified what the world could to do you and she will be helpless to assist you.
It is siblings you have loved with all the heart in your chest and then some, dismissing every labour of love you have done for them your whole life because your being and the shame society ascribes to it appalls them and threatens what social standing they have and are determined to hold on to.
It is friends – non-queer and often most painfully even queer, distancing themselves from you to shield themselves from the looming threat they perceive is coming to them from a deeply homophobic society for being allies and holding you with their love like they always have.
It is people you have loved and still love locking you out of doors whose contours you know from years of being certain they will always open to you when you knock.
It is brothers and male cousins berating you for not being man enough when you complain about things like stinging flies where before this is something they understood and will sympathize with you when you mention it because they know exactly how it hurts. Yet now you are open about your queerness and every little complain from you sends their minds into a rage at this niggling homosexual complaining like a common woman.
That homophobia is rooted in misogyny is not news to the knowledgeable.
Homophobia is also criminals gleefully taking advantage of laws targeting queer people – laws like the SSMPA – and the shame attached to being queer to kidnap, extort and in worst cases murder and disappear our bodies for good because they are confident that nothing will happen to them. If you survive it, you are unlikely to go to the police lest you get further violated by state sanction, and if you die, oh well. Dead is dead.
LGBT+ Nigerians have witnessed all of this and more. All over the country - from Jakara in Kano to Sapele in Delta.
Japa is not the dream of every Nigerian because we are a communal people at heart and we – to one degree or another – desire the company of our loved ones at all times. In the same vein, japa is not the dream of many queer Nigerians. We also love home and the people who make it homely for us.
When we speak about our violation we do so because we know the pain of being shackled by the people we have freed and, in many cases, whose freedom we facilitated.
Family for whom we could keep secrets as grave as manslaughter who will violate everything about our being – from mental health to economic wellbeing and the freedom of association.
Origins that hold our umbilical cord that toss us out and slam the door behind us even before we regain our composure simply because we are now defined as the Gods made us and they refuse to stomach our wholeness.
We know this pain, and when we speak about homophobic violence we are only speaking up about a sliver of the horror that can be our existence.
Yet fear is a mirage – however powerful – that in due course will lift and reveal beasts willing to dare death with their demand to be free. To be able to walk straight, look up to the heavens and say grace or seek forgiveness for your Gods’ given queer body – being is after all a game of choices. And one by one this indefatigable minority will soon enough stand their ground and roar back, because we have known death's many faces. We have known grief in short periods of time to last several lifetimes. And Gods forbid we continue this dying in silence. Gods forbid we waste our lives begging for a crumb of regard from people we have loved unconditionally our whole lives and getting dished grief every single time.
GODS FORBID!
Ado Aminu Aminu is a nonbinary writer of human curiosities. When not reading, writing or venting about how the patriarchy continues to ruin everything, you will find him daydreaming about his next cup of Hibiscus tea. You can follow him on Twitter - @Pettymuse, for rants and bants.
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