Nigeria -NO GAYS!

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The Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs has told a UN review of human rights in the African nation that there is no gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans community in his country.

Ojo Madueke was addressing the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UNUPR) on Human Rights in Geneva.

“As we have indicated in our National Report, we have no record of any group of Nigerians who have come together under the umbrella of Lesbian, Gay and Transgender group; let alone to start talking of their rights,” Mr Madueke said in his UNUPR address on February 9th.

“During our National Consultative Forum, we went out of our way to look for the Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Group but we could not come across Nigerian with such sexuality.

“If they are an amorphous group, then the question of violence against them does not arise let alone negotiating special rights for them.”

Nigeria’s official report to the UN states:

“Sexual minorities are not visible in Nigeria, and there is no officially registered association of gay and lesbians.

“No sexual minority or their representatives attended the Forum.

“However, in spite of this the issue was brought up at the Forum, and the views of more than 90 per cent of the participants was that Gay-Lesbian relationship or same-sex marriage was not a human rights issue in Nigeria.

“The laws of Nigeria recognise marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. However, like every democracy, those who want a change in the existing laws have to come out and lobby for the change they desire.”

In January Nigeria’s House of Representatives approved the second reading of a bill “to prohibit marriage between persons of same gender.”

The bill would punish people of the same sex who live together “as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship” with up to three years of imprisonment.

Anyone who “witnesses, abet[s] and aids” such a relationship could be imprisoned for up to five years.

Amnesty Inernational said the proposed law, which would require the approval of the Senate and the President, violates the rights to freedom from discrimination, freedom of private and family life, freedom of religion or belief, and freedom of association, guaranteed in the Nigerian constitution and by human rights treaties.

The European Parliament’s Intergroup on gay rights has called for a suspension of EU aid to Nigeria.

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