#RepealSSMPA: A Kito Story In Threads

Antigay violence, it seems, is no longer simply waiting for us to fall into the trap of kito scum. They apparently now bring the violence to us. Not only are we no longer allowed to have sex behind closed doors, but those of us who are effeminate can simply be minding their business and homophobic Nigerians will bring upon them more violation of their human rights than random physical assault and verbal indignity.

Yesterday on Twitter, a user with the handle @Glucose_Ward posted a thread, narrating the story of a kito entrapment that happened in Port Harcourt. They started by talking about their friend, who is “effeminate and bold with it” left their house, feeling unwell, and thereafter they didn’t hear from the friend for weeks.

“A week passed and I didn’t get any of his usual surprise visits. He’d been offline, both calls and texts…,” they tweeted. “When I couldn’t reach him for the second week, I reached out to my coursemate, a mutual friend. She said she hadn’t heard from him either, and his coursemates had told her he was missing tests and stuff. That made me even more worried. And he’d just relocated, so I didn’t know his new house. I kept trying to reach him for another two weeks, and nothing.”

And then, after this much time had passed, his friend reappeared with a blood-chilling story: he’d been targeted by a gang of criminals who’d apparently saw him in his effeminate glory and decided that he was a homosexual that needed to be punished. And their plan to kidnap him was an elaborate one.

“He booked a ride with Pamdrive, and a driver came to pick him up, confirming he was with Pamdrive,” tweeted @Glucose_Ward. “He said he got suspicious when the driver took a wrong turn. Tried to open the door, but it’d been locked. Apparently, they had taken him hostage because they believed he was a homosexual, simply because he was effeminate. They held him for two days, and in this time, they beat him up with a machete, then they called his parents and told them that he had traveled to Abia State to go have sex with a man.”

Check out the twitter thread below for the full story:

Former president Goodluck Jonathan infamously tweeted in 2016 that “since passing the ban on same sex marriage, I can attest that not a single Nigerian has been discriminated against as a result of that law.”

Even though he has since gone on to suggest that the barbaric antigay law should be repealed, the fact that he put out this incredibly insensitive and wicked lie into the world proves either just how out of touch or intentionally cruel our politicians and lawmakers are in this country.

Everywhere you turn both on social media and in the reality around you, there is evidence of just how much Goodluck Jonathan’s legacy – the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act he signed into law – has legitimized violence against queer Nigerians living in Nigeria.