“The Dangers LGBTQ People Face In Nigeria Is No Joking Matter.” Pamela Adie slams Cool FM Nigeria over its homophobia

Yesterday (February 11), Pamela Adie took to twitter to call out radio station, Cool FM, on the stunning show of ignorance and prejudice presenters of the Good Morning Nigeria show exhibited. The focus of the morning show was reportedly on the topic of Hollywood actress and LGBT activist, Ellen Page going viral due to her umbrage against the US Vice President, Mike Pence.

During an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, Ellen Page gave an emotional speech reminding viewers that LGBTQ+ people are under attack every day and that a culture that puts homophobic politicians in power is the root of the problem.

The actress, who was on the Late Show to promote her new Netflix show Umbrella Academy, talked about the homophobic attack on Jussie Smollett, saying it is impossible not to feel the impact of Smollett’s attack as a queer person in this political climate, “with the president and the vice president, Mike Pence, who, like, wishes I couldn’t be married. Let’s just be clear: The vice president of America wishes I didn’t have the love with my wife,” she said, holding up a photo of her and her wife, Emma Portner. “He wanted to ban that in Indiana, he believes in ‘conversion therapy,’ he has hurt LGBTQ people so badly as the [governor] of Indiana.”

Page pivoted back to Smollett, who she said she doesn’t know but sends all her love to, and made the obvious connection between his attack and the effect having anti-LGBTQ+ politicians in power has on the culture at large. “If you are in a position of power and you hate people, and you want to cause suffering to them, you go through the trouble, you spend your career trying to cause suffering, what do you think is going to happen? Kids are going to be abused and they’re gonna kill themselves, and people are going to be beaten on the street,” she said, clearly holding back tears.

“I have traveled the world and I have met the most marginalized people you could meet,” referencing her VICELAND show Gaycation, on which she traveled to countries around the world, investigating how they each treat LGBTQ+ people. “I am lucky to have this time and the privilege to say this. This needs to fucking stop.”

And this is the issue that Cool FM Nigeria presenters tackled on the Good Morning Nigeria show, with a shocking lack of intelligence and a great deal of ignorance – something that Pamela Adie took to Twitter to address in a series of tweets.

Check on it below:

Drawing parallels between the LGBTQ and pedophilia, bracketing LGBTQ people in the same space as murderers and thieves, using religion to support prejudice against queer people, and disregarding LGBT allyship with the mentality that to be pro-LGBT is to be gay – these are acts of ignorance that shouldn’t exist in 2019.

The fact that people such as these on-air personalities, people who should know better, come on air to mouth off prejudicial claptrap that is either about them being shockingly unenlightened or just pandering to homophobic listeners, says a lot about how fucked up, mediocre and backward the Nigerian society is.

That we have a media that isn’t even disposed to gleaning some real knowledge about societal injustices and passing those messages across to their subscribers makes the thought of being a Nigerian very depressing to me.