Traditional Beliefs Is The Key Behind Nigeria’s Homophobia

Nigeria has some very strict laws in place against the homosexual community. These laws have made Nigeria a very violent place to live if you are a homosexual person. They will give a person up to fourteen years in prison if they are married as same sex or engage in same sex behavior. And if you aren’t homosexual, you can still get up to ten years in prison if you attend a gay event or help in gay organizations. These means if you help someone homosexual, you can go to prison as well.

This is all because of religious beliefs of Nigeria, which does not condone homosexuality they see it as immoral. This is why they the country of Nigeria is such a bad place to live if you are homosexual. Most people just except that this is how things are and they don’t question it because of the consequences that can occur if one is caught helping or even being homosexual. Children have even been expelled from school because they were homosexual or caught help one. This makes any kind of reform on the laws and how the people think about homosexuals.

Since the new laws that have been passed in January of 2014, there have been mobs of people that have taken it upon themselves to bring homosexuals to justice. They go into their houses and make them leave, beat them, and blackmail them. This is all done while the police do nothing to stop it. Homosexuals are being blackmailed into giving other money to keep them quiet about their sexual orientation because if found out they were gay, they would lose their job, be put in prison, or even being evicted from their own homes. The treatment of this group of people in Nigeria is a crisis and they are getting very upset that foreign nations are trying to give them aid to help this group of people out.

It is usually after people move away from Nigeria that they see that what the nation is doing it wrong and they are being hateful to a group of people that don’t deserve it. The religion of Nigeria has taken over and is more discriminatory than it is helpful to the people of that country. The only way the homosexual community can survive there is to leave before something happen to them.