Denja Abdullahi is an award winning poet, literary essayist and culture technocrat. He was the National General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors from 2005-2009. Denja Abdullahi currently works in the National Council for Arts and Culture, Abuja, Nigeria, as a Deputy Director of Performing Arts. I had a chat with him on the sensitive issue of LGBT. Below is an excerpt of the chat. 

Taofeek Olatunbosun: Is it true that there is queerness (those not heterosexual) in Nigeria? 

Denja Abdullahi: We have the queer thing in our society here in Nigeria. There are queer people in various organizations as well as places in Nigeria. But this thing is also in our culture. If you want to propound queerness they are in our culture. If you want to check for them, go to Yoruba proverbs and Igbo proverbs. You will see all those things there. This is not new to African settings. So, I wonder why people think these things are western. We have them in Africa. We have hermaphrodite in Africa, “lakiriboto”, “yandaudu”.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: LGBT? 

Denja Abdullahi: Yes! Traditionally, we have LGBT in our own tradition unknown to many. The difference between us and the west is that there is a way it is being practiced that our society hibernates them in the past. In the past our society was not fighting those things. Our traditional society closed its eyes to those things. They were not fighting it. So, there was nothing like laws against gays or lesbians. So, if we are coming from that set up all we need to do is to know how to propound our own LGBT or the queer thing. No matter how we fight it we are still going towards acceptance.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: Do you know any Nigerian…? 

Denja Abdullahi: I read…recently and some people interviewed him on LGBT. He was saying if we say those things should not happen now, we are trying to deter progress. It most happened whether now or in the future. We just have to find a way to accommodate it within our system. So, we can find a way to our own kind of LGBT. That is a research area for you guys. Ours may not be the western kind of LGBT but we cannot completely ban it. It may be fashioned in a way that we can tolerate it within our society. So, when it is happening it may not be your expected type.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: You said in Nigeria we have a lot of these LGBT people then what is your take about our senators and honorables who went ahead to proscribe it? 

Denja Abdullahi: No, they were only playing to the gallery. Those laws they made… I mean the people that made those laws are culpable in some of those LGBT things. At least in homosexuality. Look, there is a lot of sexual rot in this society. Our society is even more immoral than those of the western world you are pointing fingers at. In Nigeria, Africa, we are more immoral than those in western countries. Because they don’t hide theirs but we hide a lot. If you are looking at morality…for instance in the western world when you have been positioned as a leader nobody will tolerate any depravity from you. If you let anything immoral get out you lose your position immediately. In theirs, you will come to the public to apologize saying sorry I have failed my family, etc. because in their society they don’t want the “do as I say not do as I do” kind of leadership. If you are telling the public to maintain moral rectitude and you are immoral you are not fit to be a leader. So, the proscribing of LGBT is unwarranted. There is no need for that law in the sense that those who made that law are the greatest culprits of that practice. They do it. Homosexualism is practiced in the highest places in the leadership circle in our country.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: Can you cite instances in our society? 

Denja Abdullahi: Okay, let’s talk about Bobrisky. Bobrisky… I really want to know who patronizes that fellow. Is it not people with money?

Taofeek Olatunbosun: Oh, Bobrisky! That fine guy! He just unveiled his house at Pinnock Estate in Lekki said to be worth N400million. 

Denja Abdullahi: Look, it is mostly those with money who want to go into sexual adventurism in our society that can afford it. Because practising gay or lesbianism in Nigeria is not cheap. So, there is no need for that law. All they would have done is to make other laws to strengthen our ethics and values and protect the society to regenerate itself towards proper morality and not the false morality you see all around. The same people who said they are moral kill, attack one another, steal, impoverish millions and enslave. So, is it sex that is worse than killing? By executing that law does it stop someone that is naturally gay? I have read some scholarly books about these things. In fact, a white guy did a Ph.D. and wrote his thesis on LGBT in Nigeria. You would be alarmed. I know him personally. He did his experiment, and observations and collected his data in Nigeria. He even came up with the book Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African Society which was about LGBT in northern Nigeria. You know: God made them so. This is just the way they met themselves. It is not their fault to find themselves with such nature. Even if we go back to creation. Everything you see is all derived from God’s creation. God created some people to be queer. So, what shall we do? Should we kill them just because they are gays or lesbians? What we need to do is to tolerate them. Yes, because it adds to the beauty of life. It is just the fact about life that there will be different people with different natures occupying this life. I mean this world we call our world and there is a function for everyone to tolerate one another. So, if somebody is born a queer all you need to do is to support the person and manage them. Let them also live a useful life so that they will not be destroyed because of that accident of creation. We have to see this as an accident of creation beyond us.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: No one plans for an accident and the victims should not be blamed. 

Denja Abdullahi: Yes, that is the way I think. But the ways some of our writers who are gaining popularity abroad jump at this is laughable. They only promote queerness for their own popularity and gains. They do that so they can stay abroad. That is not the right advocacy for LGBT. The majority of them are dubious individuals who try to use it to their own advantage. Some of them used it to get admissions and visas to the US. I heard such cases in the Association of Nigerian Authors when I was President. There were some writers that were being harassed by some members. One of them whom I have never known from Adam was attacked all over the place in the country. The guy called me one day and was lamenting that some of our people have been making life difficult for him. I called one of the assailants telling him, “Look, what is your problem with this fellow? Are you the one that created him? Leave him alone to his life.” He said oga it is against Islamic ethics and I said look don’t ever disturb that fellow again. Leave him alone. If you are not participating in what he is doing then leave him alone. So, the attack stopped.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: What advice will you give to religious devotees in Nigeria that their zeal for God is becoming unbearable for others? 

Denja Abdullahi: Let us be honest. Even people in religious circles practice some of these things. They sometimes do it for power. In some parts of the country, those things are done in other to gain spiritual power. To gain power over your fellow men. So, their own homosexualism could be a test of power. You know there is a type of metaphysical connection when a man subdues his fellow man in bed.

Taofeek Olatunbosun: So, it implies that when you “sex” a fellow man you conquer him while “sexing” a woman is a lower form of spiritual connection? 

Denja Abdullahi: Yes, is like you are subduing your fellow man—performance of power. Homosexualism in Nigeria or Africa is usually associated with the performance of power. It is not for the fun of it. So, it happens in religious circles and traditional circles. So, some of these practices we blame society for are not mostly done by a man or woman looking for food. The masses are largely innocent of some of these practices. It is still the people controlling us and looking for power that are indulging in these practices. So, I would advise religious people to keep preaching morality because if religion doesn’t preach morality, then it is no longer a religion. They should preach according to their sacred texts and encourage their members to show good examples and not going to criminalize gays or lesbians