Arije Olasunkanmi Omobolaji

A cripple does not fall victim to a war foretold. This time-worn African adage applies to Mr Arije Olasunkanmi Omobolaji, 36, a researcher who has a Master’s Degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria. Olasunkanmi who has some international publications to his name is a bisexual man.  He knows how he is naturally wired. He is also aware of how Nigerian society reacts to and persecutes those in the same sex habit. That is the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Nigeria.

Put differently, anyone not considered “sexually straight” could at any time, face death through mob action, the local vigilance group called the Odua People’s Congress (OPC), Hisbah or Sharia Police in the North, the regular Police, or persecution by the church, the mosque, the family and, most disastrously, the law waxed by the Federal Government of Nigeria and the sub-nationals at the state and local government levels.

Olasunkanmi himself escaped death by the skin of his teeth when people who knew him as a bisexual and his male lover, Tobiloba, laid ambush for and stabbed him on his right hand in front of his wife’s shop at Agbado in May 2023. Those behind the attack were members of the OPC, a vigilance gang notorious for snuffing life out of people with no more effort than stepping on maggots! Olasunkanmi reported the matter at the Police Area Headquarters in Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos but the cops there believed that a scallywag who parades himself as a bisexual deserves to be murdered. How cheeky could law enforcers be?

What could have given the Policeman the effrontery to speak with such magisterial finality? Indeed, the Federal Government and the state provided a legal umbrella for that. Here is how.

The cabinet of Nigeria, on 18 January 2007, approved the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2006 and forwarded it to the National Assembly. Though the Upper legislative chamber did not pass the bill, it sailed through like a greased pig in a slaughterhouse on 29 November 2011. That was when the Senate passed the “Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill, 2011”. The lower house, the House of Representatives, passed it also on 30 May 2013, awaiting President Goodluck Jonathan’s signature. “The bill would:

• make a marriage contract or civil union entered into between persons of the same sex “invalid and illegal and … not recognized as entitled to the benefits of a valid marriage”
• make void and unenforceable in Nigeria a marriage contract or civil union entered into between persons of the same sex by a certificate issued by a foreign country
• prohibit the solemnization of any marriage or civil union entered into between persons of the same sex “in any place of worship either Church or Mosque or any other place or whatsoever called in Nigeria”
• prohibit the registration of “gay clubs, societies and organizations, their sustenance, processions, and meetings”
• prohibit the “public show of same-sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly”
• make a person who enters into a same-sex marriage contract or civil union liable for 14 years imprisonment
• make a person who “registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies, and organization, or directly or indirectly make a public show of same-sex amorous relationship in Nigeria” liable for 10 years imprisonment
• make a person or group of persons that “witness, abet and aids the solemnization of a same-sex marriage or civil union, or supports the registration, operation, and sustenance of gay clubs, societies, organizations, processions or meetings in Nigeria” liable for 10 years imprisonment
• define “civil union” for purposes of this law to mean “any arrangement between persons of the same sex to live together as sex partners, and … include such descriptions as adult independent relationships, caring partnerships, civil partnerships, civil solidarity pacts, domestic partnerships, reciprocal beneficiary relationships, registered partnerships, significant relationships, stable unions, etc.”

The President, on 7 January 2014, signed into law the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda also passed a similar law in 2013 and it “imposes life imprisonment for some types of homosexual acts.”

With this kind of law that flies against the international fundamental human right of association, the life of a man like Olasunkanmi is not safe at all. And one can hardly blame him or any bisexual man like him. It boils down to the fact that he did not create himself. That is how, as written in the early part of this essay, his brain was wired by God or nature or the evolutionary process…

Olasunkanmi’s Formative Years

Born in Lagos, Olasunkanmi from his early impressionable age loved to identify with female things; he would wear his sister’s clothes when no one was around to breathe down his neck, enter their bathroom, and even use their make-up kit. Even at that age, he was aware that his puritanical family should not catch him doing those things, otherwise, they would beat the hell out of him or even regard him as a bastard.

Nature started taking its toll on him. He noticed that he was attracted to both girls and boys. He felt calmer in the company of a male and enjoyed bear hugs, handshakes, and backslapping with them. He noticed changes in both sexes and, at a point, he too was becoming morally judgmental, but as he grew up further and read literature materials, his real biological nature dawned on him as a bisexual. That was his status which he could do nothing about. However, he dared not confide in anyone, given the nature of the Nigerian society. He endured and allowed things to take their natural route.

In 1998, Olasunkanmi was in secondary school when he had his first girlfriend, Bunmi. He would write love letters bursting at the edges with saccharine encomiums, “I can sit on an active electricity transformer for you. You are the center of my gravity and you are the sugar in my tea. If you will be my girlfriend, doxology…” She allowed Olasunkanmi to hug him and even make love to her.  That was his first experience with the opposite sex.

However, he was not satisfied; he felt a yawning vacuum of unfulfilled sexual desire. Then he went further on another sexual adventure with the same sex. That was how he met Hassan, a quiet kindred spirit. He drew him out of his shell, they became friends and Olasunkanmi made love to him. Here, Olasunkanmi ‘s bisexual nature came up full throttle! He was indeed satisfied. It was like a journey of self-discovery, an epiphany of sorts.

Since Nigerians have a proverb that 20 children cannot play together for 20 years, secondary graduation scattered all mates into the four winds and Olasunkanmi lost contact with his bisexual lovers. It was painful. He could not confide in anyone the type of psychological burden he carried, given the self-righteous nature of the people.

It was at this point that, when he was a teacher, like a conjurer’s rabbit, Ogundiran Tobiloba Jamiu came into his life around March and April 2021. The two became close. To Olasunkanmi, it was like an answered prayer. They went out together to relaxation joints like the Sweet Sensation in Ijaye Ogba of Lagos. There, they watched the English Premier League together and watched their food down with chilled drinks. The two became inseparable.

Tobiloba visited Olasunkanmi’s family and his wife knew them as good friends. However, some people were bent on doing them mischief because they had concluded that the two men were lovers. That was where the threats came in. OPC which is partly a vigilance group and a cult criminal gang swore by their grandfathers’ coffins that they would kill Olasunkanmi and Tobiloba. It was at this point that Tobiloba voted with his feet and disappeared. He was left vulnerable, always looking at his back while walking along some streets or dark alleys.

As written in the earlier part of this story, it was at this point that Olasunkanmi was attacked in front of his wife’s shop. Even after Tobiloba melted into thin air, OPC, the street urchins, or area boys threatened to kill Olasunkanmi. The response of the Police was not reassuring either. They considered Olasunkanmi as a scoundrel that should be sent into a crocodile-infested pond.

The Police have every reason to behave like that. They enforce the federal criminal code in Southern Nigeria and the Penal Code in the North. These are published by Wikipedia:

“Federal Republic of Nigeria

Federal Criminal Code in all southern states

Sex acts between men are illegal under the Criminal Code that applies to southern Nigeria and carries a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment. Sex acts between women are not mentioned specifically in the code, although it is arguable that the gender-neutral term “person” in Section 214 of the code includes women. Chapter 21 of that code provides in pertinent part as follows:

• Section 214.

Any person who – (a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; or (c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature; is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years.

• Section 215.

Any person who attempts to commit any of the offenses defined in the last preceding section is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for seven years. The offender cannot be arrested without a warrant.

• Section 217.

Any male person who, whether in public or private, commits any act of gross indecency with another male person, procures another male person to commit any act of gross indecency with him, or attempts to procure the commission of any such act by any male person with himself or with another male person, whether in public or private, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for three years. The offender cannot be arrested without a warrant.

Federal Penal Code in all northern states.

Section 284 of the Penal Code (Northern States) Federal Provisions Act, which applies to all states in northern Nigeria, provides that:

Whoever has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to fourteen years and shall also be liable to fine.

Section 405 provides that a male person who dresses or is attired in the fashion of a woman in a public place or who practices sodomy as a means of livelihood or as a profession is a “vagabond”. Under Section 407, the punishment is a maximum of one year’s imprisonment or a fine, or both. 

Section 405 also provides that an “incorrigible vagabond” is “any person who after being convicted as a vagabond commits any of the offences which will render him liable to be convicted as such again”. The punishment under Section 408 is a maximum of two years imprisonment a fine, or both.

The people in Olasunkanmi’s area started to call him unprintable names.

In a telephone interview from his hideout, before he travelled out of Nigeria, Olasunkanmi lamented desperately:

“My enemies called me “anal man”, “boy lover”. They threatened to kill me and nothing would happen. They ridicule me at every point. I now hide like a common felon. Relocating to the North is like running from a frying pan into a fire. In the North, Sharia law holds sway, and a man could be summarily executed without recourse to the wheel of justice that many perceive as running slowly.”

So, Olasunkanmi had no alternative but to escape abroad because life has no spare, duplicate, or triplicate!