9 People Arrested As Nigerians Protest Jonathan’s Anti-gay Law In New York

 

New York police arrested nine protesters outside the Nigerian Consulate on Friday, after they blocked its entrance during a demonstration against the anti-gay bill signed to law by President Goodluck Jonathan in January.

The group was part of several LGBT advocacy organisations based in New York that participated in the Global Day of Action against the law. Similar demonstrations were held in other cities including London, UK and Vancouver, Canada.
About 100 protesters gathered across the road from the consulate, carrying placards and Nigerian flags. The group that was arrested crossed the road and sat in a semicircle outside the consulate door, with their elbows interlocked. More photos after cut...

“Fight corruption, not gays,” they chanted, before a policeman and a representative of the consulate asked them to leave. They stayed put and were promptly handcuffed.
Heavy sanctions against same-sex relationships and advocacy in Nigeria motivated Michael Ighodaro, a gay rights activist, to co-convene the American leg of the protests.
Ighodaro sought asylum in America after reportedly receiving death threats and was beaten up in Abuja in 2012 in alleged homophobic attacks.
“I’m notglad to be here,” he said. “I don’t want to be here, because I’m Nigerian. I should be back in Nigeria, not here fighting for what is rightfully ours, not here fighting for what God gave to us as freedom.”
Ighodaro said that trying to make a gay person straight is like trying to change a person’s race.
Protesters block the entrance to Nigeria House in New York
“I was born gay, I wasn’t made gay,” he told the crowd, with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t get gay from Western countries. I was in Nigeria when I became gay. I was gay in my mother’s womb and I am still gay,” he added.
The demonstration was supported by Housing Works, a New York-based HIV/AIDS advocacy group. Its President and CEO, Charles King, said many gay people who are at risk of infection will not come forward for testing and treatment because of the new law.
Over three million Nigerians live with HIV/AIDS: the second highest in Africa.
King, who was also arrested, said that the prejudice that some Nigerians have towards gay rights will worsen the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“The last couple of years have been remarkable ones in the fight against AIDS as we come to a collective realization that we have within our grasp the science and technology – even without a cure or a vaccine – to bring the epidemic to an end around the globe,” he said. “But sadly, we still don’t have the science or the technology to end hate.”
Nigeria is a recipient of the US President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). It identifies men who have sex with men (MSM) as a population that is “at increased risk” of infection. According to PEPFAR, MSM globally are 19 times more likely to be HIV-positive than the general population.

Michael Tikili, an HIV/AIDS activist,said that it is contradictory for the government to receive this money and yet criminalize those it is disbursed for.
Ighodaro is part of a growing community of gay Nigerians exiled in the US. Saheed, a gay Nigerian who declined to give his surname, said he is not planning to return home any time soon. He said he arrived in the US in 2004 and had been a gay rights activist back home.

It’s a shameful thing to denounce my country but I don’t have a choice,” he said. “Now I’m here in another man’s country trying to be.”