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Opinion: LGBT is Not New in Nigeria, We've Had Them Since the '80s - by Simon Nwachuya

Posted by Samuel on Sun 01st Nov, 2015 - tori.ng

Nigeria is known to have little or no tolerance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) folks. In this opinion piece, Simon Nwachuya takes a swipe at the antagonists of the controversial issue.

 
I was born in a town called Ugep in Cross river state in a neighborhood that had LGBT as far back as the late 80’s before it became a headline. He/she was popular as James Obu. As a kid, I constantly ran over a hundred thoughts on silly stuffs and the most common was how she/he pee’ed.

I never thought of the trauma and rejections James went through everyday struggling to balance what he was born as and what her inner being really wanted. I didn’t care.

One of my parents is from Anambra state; he told me a story about a fellow who couldn’t escape the bombs from the choppers during the civil war. ‘’one’me ka nwanyi’’ (he behaves like a woman) he said.

Then later I heard and read a lot of stories about persons who lived as way back as the 40’s in African societies who were burnt, buried, sacrificed, stoned or ostracized because they were born in a particular way at about the same time their contemporaries were worshiped as gods in India. LGBT is not new.

I met young folks in schools who continually struggled to define who they were and why the society hated them so much. I moved a lot as a person from the age of 14 when I believed I was grown enough to travel alone or with very little guidance. One thing I can constantly point at from my view on LGBT is that some people just struggle too hard to survive because you think they were carved out of stones. No rights to be who they are.

No rights to breathe because their sexual urges are different. No rights to be alive. Hate, hate and more hate even when they decide to make switches due to medical conditions. Some people do not care. They’ve got religion to fall back to which they however break every other commandment there in. Adultery used to be a capital offence – what happened?

Have you ever made out time to think about how many suicides go under your sleeves? Well, thanks a lot for that hate comment.

Recently in Nigeria there’s this been a news report, that the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation banned a channel from airing a TV program titled ‘I am Jazz’’ on DSTV.

This is quite hilarious and bland to me considering that we currently live in a dot com era with easy access to whatever we are curious about. Would there be a need to remind us of how negative parents stood against sex education in schools until the students had to carry out experiments themselves?

Jazz Jennings, a South Florida teen, was assigned male at birth. Aged 5, Jennings was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in childhood, making her one of the youngest publicly documented people to be identified as gender dysphoric.. Her parents, Greg and Jeanette, decided to support her female gender identity by her fifth birthday.

Personally I feel the program would go a long way to enlighten more people on the whole transgender issue as well as create an opportunity for children to discuss difficult situations and ask hard questions about whom they are and what they feel inside.

Just maybe it could give a hand to prevent the increase of over 45% of Trans kids who commit suicide every year due to discrimination. These kids didn’t choose this life. They are your kids, my kids, our kids and kids of the world.
 
 
Written pieces and contributions on this platform are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Tori.ng


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