Human Rights and the Prohibition of Same-Sex Relations in Nigeria: Mapping the Contours of Homophobia in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters and Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows

Abstract

A combination of socio-cultural and religious factors have led to the entrenchment of heteronormativity as the primary index of sexual expression in Nigeria and most parts of Africa. The deployment of legislation to protect and promote heterosexual sexuality is implicated in the enactment of Nigeria’s Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (2013) which tends to legitimize the violation of the human rights of LGBT persons in the country. The situation reflects in the predominant monothematic construction of homosexuality as a ringing abnormality in most African literary works that explore the subject of human sexuality. Using Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965), Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows (2005), the Constitution of Nigeria (1999) and other domestic and international human rights instruments ratified in Nigeria as its analytical touchstones, this paper contextualizes the violation of the human rights of LGBT persons in Nigeria as a breach of the law. With the Queer as its theoretical canvass, the paper exposes the weaponization of legislation in the sustenance of prejudice. The paper recommends the dismantling of the institutional structures upon which homophobia is constructed in order to extend the cause of human freedom, individual self-actualization and collective advancement.