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Introduction and context: LGBTQ and the un-Africanness debate
It is my persuasion that an understanding of the everyday practices of symbolic transgression of gender and sexuality amongst the Ogu of Southwestern Nigeria should begin with locating the discourse within the broader context in Africa. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer (LGBTQ) debates in Africa have assumed peculiar dimensions for various reasons. One such dominant debate is epistemological, with proponents as individuals and groups asserting the
‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality in Africa ( McAllister 2013 : 88). Advocates of this view contend that such practice and diverse manifestations of its experiences are not traceable in history. Extremist as the view may sound, it has nevertheless set the tone for social interaction in many African countries, and as a dominant form of social consciousness, it has often determined questions around safety and insecurity ( McAllister 2013 : S88), privilege and marginalisation ( Msibi 2012 : 515), normality and abnormality ( Matebeni and Msibi 2015 : 3), among others.
The framing of same-sex sexualities and gender variance as ‘un-African’
is related to the purchase of Christianity and Islam, two Abrahamic religions that have dominant influence on contemporary Africans. According to Mutua (2011 : 452),
The subject of sexual orientation, as understood in all its complexity, is extremely charged in Africa because of the deeply socially conservative land-scape and the domination of the political space by Christianity and Islam, the two prevalent messianic faiths in the region.
As he reflects further, describing Africa as a spatial category edged by conserva-tism may account less for the response to the question of sexual orientation than for holding Christianity and Islam accountable. Invariably, Mutua avers that rather than seeing Africa as inherently and historically homophobic, it would be more appropriate to acknowledge how the popular following of the Abrahamic religions is at the core of the social phenomenon because ‘the two religious traditions [. . . have] homophobia in their doctrinal teachings’ (Mutua in Mutua 2011 : 452).
The human and the non-human 21 Closely linked to the fusion of African conservatism and overwhelming embrace of the Abrahamic faiths is the burden of colonial memory and the anxiety of recol-onisation by the West, even when in this context the West appears to designate the transcendence of Africa because of its rather liberal approach to the question of homosexuality. The anxiety generated at the cultural level, according to John McAllister (2013 : 88), makes
identifying with what is so visibly a Western image of gayness expose [. . .]
sexual minority communities to the most dangerous of the justifications for homophobia in Africa, the argument that sexual dissidence is a neo-colonial conspiracy to subvert ‘African values’.
Gayness is taken as symbolic of the other categories of the LGBTQ that reveal, amongst other things, the increased visibility of ‘personified . . . homosexual identity’, which has in turn produced ‘increased expressions of homophobia in Africa’ ( Msibi 2011 : 55).
The debates and controversies about LGBTQ issues have also found expres-sion in the domain of leadership, where certain African leaders either accuse their counterparts of aiding a foreign culture or encouraging human rights abuse through their opposition to the expression of LGBTQ rights. One such instance was the public remonstration of the presidents of Botswana and Zambia against the president of Malawi in the 2000s ‘for his homophobic rhetoric, a rare break-ing of ranks among African nationalist patriarchs’ ( Epprecht 2013 : 1). The open disagreement at the leadership level is instructive in the sense that in spite of the dominant homophobic hostility, certain African countries have continued to demonstrate exceptional reception and tolerance for the articulation of LGBTQ identity. Countries such as South Africa and Mauritius can be cited as examples ( Epprecht 2013 ). What is more, the place of South Africa in the contemporary evolution of LGBTQ discourse is further reinforced by the fact that it provides a rather unique historical model as far back as 1972 when S’bu, a black South African male, was wedded to a Methodist priest in a village some distance from Durban in the KwaZulu-Natalregion. According to Reddy (2009 : 341), the event of the 1970s in today’s equation is an illustration of how ‘history always has an uncannily ironic relation (and relevance) to the present’. In spite of the hostility and opposition to the expression of LGBTQ rights, not only has the situation on the continent drawn attention from the United Nations and other world bodies, it has become an issue for which various rights groups, even in the countries with the strongest opposition, have continued to canvas for as constitutive of human rights.
Nigeria and the forbidding climate
In this section, it is my intention to connect the ongoing sexuality debate to the internal dynamics of the Nigerian postcolonial society, especially with reference
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to sexual orientation and gender identity. In Nigeria, the homophobic conscious-ness at the turn of the twenty-first century also coincided with the reinstitution of democracy in the country in 1999. The period between 1999 and 2007 witnessed a series of arguments and counter-arguments about the propriety of homosexual identity. The general feeling during the democratic dispensation headed by Oluse-gun Obasanjo was that giving an official endorsement to such identity would be impossible, even when there really was no law prohibiting the affirmation of homosexual identity. Obasanjo did not make any pretence about his revulsion of the expression of LGBTQ rights – a situation that warranted outcry by people with sexual orientations other than the heterosexual to seek help from the inter-national community. For instance, the Alternative Lifestyle Foundation in 2005 published an article in the International Spectrum in which ‘this unsolicited report describes a dire situation for gay men and lesbians in one of the world’s poorest countries, and announces the formation of an organisation whose mission is to fight anti-gay persecution and to lobby for sexual equality’. The description of the report as unsolicited underscores the desperation of people with alternative sexual orientations to call the world’s attention to their plight during this period.
Also important in the controversy was the role of the (Nigerian) Anglican Church as a platform that had consistently condemned homosexuality while making its view also known at international fora for which authorities of the sect, particularly in the United Kingdom, had had to intervene several times. As H. A. Gay Times (2008 : 97) recollects, the Church of Nigeria issued a statement in October 2003, which read,
We totally rejected and renounce this obnoxious attitude and behaviour [homosexuality], it is devilish and satanic. It comes directly from the pit of hell. It is an idea sponsored by Satan himself and being executed by his fol-lowers and adherents who have infiltrated the church. The blood and power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth will flush them out with disgrace and great pains.
Such public condemnation of people with non-heterosexual orientation to ‘the pit of hell’ provided a moral ground by which the social construct of abnormality was sustained during the political dispensation.
While the late Umaru Yar’adua’s tenure after Obasanjo was short-lived, Good-luck Jonathan’s administration, mild as it appeared, was no less severe in respect of what should be the official position on and attitude towards LGBTQ rights. Part of Jonathan’s legacy is the outlawry of gay rights in 2012. His presidency witnessed the enactment of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which amongst others,
‘prohibits a marriage contract or civil union entered into between persons of the same sex, and provides penalties for the solemnisation and witnessing of same thereof’ ( Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2013 ). The popular following of Islam and Christianity as two Abrahamic religions in the country was an under-lying explanation for the legal penalties imposed on LGBTQ people. Citing the response of an activist to the outlawing of homosexuality, Paul Canning (2012 : 6) reports, ‘One of Africa’s best-known human rights activists says religion is very
The human and the non-human 23 much behind Nigeria’s recent outlawing of same-sex unions, which could mean a 14-year jail term for anyone convicted of entering into a gay marriage contract.’
Not only are the guilty susceptible to 14 years in jail but also those found to be aiding and abetting them are liable to 10 years imprisonment. By 2014, there had been reports about arrests and interrogations of people in Southern Nigeria per-ceived to be gay, showing an onset of persecution in Christian-dominated areas;
people engaged in same-sex sexualities in the predominantly Muslim north had long before that time been facing punishment under shariah law ( Nichols 2014 : 24). The stringency for successive administrations up to the present day is an indication that the expression of LGBTQ rights in Nigeria faces difficult times because of the forbidding stance of the Nigerian government that rests solidly on social constructs derivable primarily from the homophobic tapestry of religion.
Generally, the atmosphere of hostility to homosexual orientation in Nigeria has enabled a consciousness of what Lindsey Green-Simms (2016 : 139) has described as ‘everyday fears, desires, pleasures, and anxieties of those who expe-rience same-sex attraction’. Although Green-Simms’s observation describes the representation of characters in twenty-first-century Nigerian novels, the wordings are apt in capturing the actual realities and experiences of people constructed as differently oriented from heterosexuality in Nigeria. While, for instance, Charley Boy and Denrele are two popular figures in the entertainment industry who have openly disclosed their homosexuality and identified with gay communities in the country, the overwhelmingly hostile social consciousness has since made both of them engage in continual affirmation and denial. The example of the two popular stars and their ambivalence are important in the way they illustrate the precarious condition of LGBTQ communities in Nigeria. The experience further explains why in most scholarship about the prevalence of homophobia in Africa, Nigeria has often been included in the transnational trinity of hostility, the other two sub-Saharan African countries being Uganda and Zimbabwe ( Hoad 2016 ).
A more personal account was the one given by Oluwaseun on Sahara TV (2015 ) during a special report titled ‘Being Gay in Nigeria’ aired in the wake of the pas-sage of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in 2013 . A Lagos state indigene by birth and residence, Oluwaseun paints a vivid picture of the forbidding atmo-sphere against homosexuality in Nigeria in the following words:
Nigeria is not the best place to be a gay person. The society is not very accept-ing, but we are beginning to see changes. Prior to now people do (sic) not talk about sexuality . . . most people would not believe homosexuals exist in Nigeria . . . but because of the law on homosexuality in Nigeria . . . because of the global phenomenon of it now, we want acceptance here too in Nigeria . . . we want to be recognized . . . we want our human rights . . . we want to be free . . . we want to be able to express ourselves
He goes further to describe the daily struggle against discrimination, generally as an experience he says is common ‘on the bus, in school and at place of work’.
The ubiquity of discrimination by society, to say nothing of the harassment by law
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enforcement agents, has led to what Oluwaseun refers to as deterioration in the health of same-sex-oriented individuals who on this account have to contend with
‘depression and mental health’. The revelation is instructive by the very sense in which it contrasts with findings from South Africa where the legalisation of homosexuality and acceptance of people of same-sex orientation have proven to facilitate insulation against depression and mental illness ( Potgieter and Reygan 2012 : 39; Sandfort et al. 2016). Although Oluwaseun expresses optimism in the face of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, because it ironically draws atten-tion in a sense to the existence of homosexuals in Nigeria – there is yet to be seen a sympathetic response for which people ‘would have been able to share part of our burden’. The absence of an understanding social response explains why the video clip blurs Oluwaseun’s face for protection from discrimination and further attack, which is another dimension to the iconography of homophobia in Nigeria.
Before moving on to the discussion about Ogu forms of gender and sexuality, it is worth pointing out that there is considerable variation in formations of sex, gen-der, and sexual identities and relations across Nigeria. For example, the levelling of sexes and gender roles within the context of farming amongst the Ogu contrasts significantly with the binary that is affirmed between men and women amongst the Biase people of Southeastern Nigeria. According to David Iyam (1996 : 369), Biase people not only regard the cultivation of certain crops as exclusive to men but also concede ‘fullness’ to women only in the context of magical powers, which in most cases assumes ambivalence of greater negative connotation than positive. Considering the constant contestations that dog how women’s wealth is regarded in the Biase community (405–6), the commonality of interaction with the non-human others does not translate into blurring of genders. The contrast that the reality offers in comparison with the Ogu may then be explained in the non-acknowledgment of the subjectivity of the non-human others by the Biase.
Beyond intimacy: witnessing symbolic sexual and gender transgression amongst the Ogu
In this section of the chapter, I reflect on the irony about the actuality of sexual and gender transgression at the symbolic level amongst the Ogu and how it con-trasts with the ongoing contestations about sexuality in Nigeria. The situation in Nigeria and the debates around the reception of, and opposition to, homosexuality the world over have generally been about discourses of intimacy. Central to the various debates is the question of the body as a trapped social category, because the body is not possible to change, besides the tyranny of gender allocation on the basis of biological sex. It is my intention in this chapter to steer the discussion away from that familiar domain in order to examine at the level of symbolism the various ways in which it is possible to witness manifestations of sexuality. I will also discuss the transgression between the dominant binary of heterosexual-ity and homosexualheterosexual-ity as a constitutive element of the everyday cultural epis-teme in a country such as Nigeria, where the forbidding stance of officialdom ranks amongst the most stringent in the world. In order to underscore the irony
The human and the non-human 25 of the situation in Nigeria, I adopt the critical model offered by Fox and Alldred (2013) by extricating the discourse of homosexuality from the realm of the per-sonal into the ‘imperper-sonal’. The approach enables a libratory discursive foray in which understandings of embodiment and individual identities transcend the notion of intimacy through the granting of subjectivity to language and other impersonal categories. As Fox and Alldred explain, such an approach is an ‘anti-humanist move [that] is then needed to overturn anthropocentric privileging of the human body and subject as the locus of sexuality’ (2013: 769). By shifting the location of desire and sexuality from the bodies and individuals, they assay to discuss sexuality as contingent on ‘assemblages’ of impersonal flow in which
‘bodies, things, ideas and social institutions, [constitute a system] which produces sexual [and other] capacities in bodies’ (2013: 769). The territorialisation of the body, they argue, sets limits in the imagination of sexuality and restricts possi-bilities beyond the normative. Against this backdrop, I examine the impersonal interaction of bodies and individuals amongst the Ogu of Southwestern Nigeria against the architecture of ‘assemblages’ in which the discourse of land, com-merce, and labour offers fresh understandings of sexuality as parallel to the oth-erwise restrictive assumptions of ‘bodies and individuals’ in the unpacking of sexuality as a social category of intimacy. In a similar way, I also consider how the trope of ‘assemblages’ resonates with expressions of spirituality and worship amongst the Ogu, together with curious resonances in biblical hermeneutics.
My adoption of auto-ethnography, what Holman Jones (2005 ) describes as dealing with ‘self-other’ relations, stems from the need to project from a perspec-tive of indigeneity the cultural world of the Ogu, an indigenous group based in Southwestern Nigeria to which I belong. Ogu is often erroneously described in scholarship as constitutive of Yoruba ethnic identity. This is the case even though I bear a Yoruba surname. 1 This methodological approach is needed because of the agency of auto-ethnography in the representation of self and the interrogation of external hegemonic discourses that undermine the place of self and the con-struction of selfhood by outsiders ( Cloud 2010 : 84). As is normatively conceived ( Oelgemoller 2012 : 1487), my approach in this discussion will seek to foreground my personal experience of the Ogu and the intersection of this experience with the collective cultural intimations that are relative to the Ogu identity, while drawing on a range of scholarly material to facilitate the discussion.
Gender binarism and blurring amongst the Ogu
The introduction to this chapter provided a context for the discussion of sym-bolic manifestations of gender and sexuality amongst the Ogu in Nigeria, ending with an explication on the adopted methodology. The next sections address the question of gender binarism and blurring, and linguistic relations in the everyday episteme amongst the Ogu. Other preoccupations border on ontologies of sex/
gender/sexual diversities; the intersection of commerce, labour, and land within the discourse of gender and sexuality; symbolic transgression regarding gender and sexuality in Ogu spirituality; and the conclusion to the chapter.
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The Ogu, a minority identity in Lagos and Ogun States in Southwestern Nige-ria, provide an example of a cultural category in which linguistic and spiritual interaction between humans, deities, and other non-human categories facilitates an order of symbolic transgression of sexuality. Understanding how the interac-tion works requires that we consider first the fundamental paradigm of everyday practices of human relations. Generally, the Ogu affirm the interaction of gen-der as basically constituted by male-female binary. Invariably, in the allocation of roles, beginning with chores and socialisation for children, there tends to be the overt or implied acknowledgement of gender difference. While, for instance, chores such as sweeping and cooking are assigned to girls, others such as farm-ing, huntfarm-ing, and harvesting of palm fruits by climbing palm trees are traditionally designated as the preserve of male children. In the performance of drumming and dance, most genres such as hungan , sato , and agbato are conceded to males, while genres such as gangbe and pasha , amongst others, are performed by women. Yet there are other genres such as toba , ajogen , and zobo that require both male and female for their membership and performance to be normatively constituted. In the last illustration, it is clear that the fusion of sexes is a precondition for the mobilisation and performance of some genres.
The Ogu, a minority identity in Lagos and Ogun States in Southwestern Nige-ria, provide an example of a cultural category in which linguistic and spiritual interaction between humans, deities, and other non-human categories facilitates an order of symbolic transgression of sexuality. Understanding how the interac-tion works requires that we consider first the fundamental paradigm of everyday practices of human relations. Generally, the Ogu affirm the interaction of gen-der as basically constituted by male-female binary. Invariably, in the allocation of roles, beginning with chores and socialisation for children, there tends to be the overt or implied acknowledgement of gender difference. While, for instance, chores such as sweeping and cooking are assigned to girls, others such as farm-ing, huntfarm-ing, and harvesting of palm fruits by climbing palm trees are traditionally designated as the preserve of male children. In the performance of drumming and dance, most genres such as hungan , sato , and agbato are conceded to males, while genres such as gangbe and pasha , amongst others, are performed by women. Yet there are other genres such as toba , ajogen , and zobo that require both male and female for their membership and performance to be normatively constituted. In the last illustration, it is clear that the fusion of sexes is a precondition for the mobilisation and performance of some genres.