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Nigerian Judge Ends Prosecution of 47 Nigerian Men Swept up in Anti-Gay Sting
But because the case was tossed on a technicality, the men could still be arrested on the same charges.
It's the end of an ordeal for 47 men in Nigeria who will no longer face legal persecution under the country's draconic ban on same-sex affection. But the men say that the social stigma associated with their arrest two years ago has been difficult to endure.
The men were swept up in a police sting in Lagos in 2018, in what officials claimed was an "initiation" into a gay club. Police said that they were "engaging in public show of a same-sex amorous relationship with each other in hidden places."
Victims of the raid insist that they were simply attending a birthday party at a hotel.
Nigeria passed a ban on homosexuality in 2014 under the administration of Goodluck Jonathan, with harsh penalties for anyone convicted. If the men had been found guilty, they faced more than a decade in prison. In addition to legal consequences, the victims' identities were also widely publicized, and many reported that they had been publicly ostracized — including the taxi driver who drove some of the men to the party. Police disclosed the names of the arrested men in a televised news conference after the raid.
"Since the past two years, this has caused a lot of damage in my life," one of the men told PM News Nigeria.
Despite conducting the high-profile raid, the government's enthusiasm for prosecution seems to have waned after the arrests. Police attorney J.I. Ebhoremen failed to appear in court nine separate times, according to defense counsel Israel Usamn. With the case finally coming to trial this year, the court found that prosecutors failed to appear in court or present witnesses. The case was formally dropped for "lack of diligent prosecution."
"For whatever reason, the prosecution is no more capable or not willing to prosecute this case," wrote Judge Rilwan Aikawa.
So far, no Nigerians have been convicted under the law. But it remains on the books, and it's possible that the failure of this high-profile case may spur police and prosecutors to take harsher action against LGBTQ+ citizens. Community organizers expressed concern that the court dropped the case on a technicality rather than fully dismissing it. Without a dismissal, police could still arrest the victims on the exact same charges, according to The Initiative for Equal Rights in Nigeria.
TIER is one of the leading organizations in Africa pushing for LGBTQ+ equality, and a spokesperson says that they're exploring options to further exonerate the men who were arrested.
"You can't even build a case around it," TIERS officer Emmanuel Sadi told Al Jazeera. "I hope they realise how redundant it is as a law, and they are open to removing or repealing it."
Harsh discrimination remains a serious issue for LGBTQ+ people in many countries, particularly across Africa. While a handful of countries have recently decriminalized homosexuality, same-sex relations are illegal in most African countries, in many cases due to leftover laws from colonial occupiers. Mauritania, Somalia, and South Sudan join some parts of Nigeria in imposing the death penalty for homosexuality.
Kenya's High Court upheld the country's ban on homosexuality last year, claiming that it was an effective means to stop the spread of HIV — but in fact, just the opposite is true, according to an expert opinion published in The Lancet. And in Egypt, where there is a long history of art depicting same-sex intimacy, authories have in recent years harshly cracked down on open displays of support for queer people.
Meanwhile, American groups like Family Watch International continue to hold training sessions for African politicians seeking to expand punitive laws targeting sexual minorities. Family Watch International, which is led by an executive at Intel, has led numerous campaigns to block sexual education and freedom around the world.
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