So S/He's Gay, What About It?

A young man was recently killed in Nigeria for being gay. His death was not quiet. It was not private. It was public, brutal, and—most disturbingly—celebrated. Men applauded. They cheered. They filmed. They shared the videos with captions dripping with righteousness, as if they had just rid society of a plague.

And I want to ask a simple question: So he was gay. What about it?

What about his sexuality warranted death? What about two consenting adults loving each other in private justifies mob violence? What about homosexuality is so threatening to our collective survival that we must hunt down and eliminate gay men and women?

The answer, of course, is nothing. There is nothing about homosexuality that threatens Nigeria. But everything about our response to it reveals the rot at our core. Our obsession with policing other people’s sexuality exposes not moral clarity, but moral bankruptcy. It reveals our collective insecurity, our desperate need for scapegoats, and our willingness to manufacture crises to avoid confronting real ones.

Let us conduct an audit of our outrage. Let us examine what triggers mob violence in Nigeria and what gets a shrug, a laugh, or a knowing nod.

A politician steals ₦50 billion meant for schools and hospitals: Two days’ social media outrage. Trendy mockery skit videos. Occasional subs on said politician’s social media handles. End!

A pastor sexually abuses young congregants: Two and a half days’ social media outrage. Videos from Defenders Corps. Anti-Feminists Gang Rhetoric. End!

A man beats his wife until she requires hospitalisation: “Marriage is Hard Gang” tweets and videos. Two and a half days of feminist outrage tweets. Anti-marriage rhetoric gang. End!

Child abuse, child marriage, child labour: Tribal rhetoric. Three days of feminist outrage tweets. Three days of Anti-Feminists Gang rhetoric.

Two men love each other consensually: Death penalty. Public execution. Applause. End!

Do you see the pattern? The things that actually destroy lives, dismantle families, and erode social fabric get rationalised, minimised, or ignored. But two adults loving each other consensually? That is the crisis. That is the emergency. That is what requires immediate, violent intervention.

Our selective morality reveals that this is not about morality at all. It is about power. It is about control. It is about having someone—anyone—beneath us on the social hierarchy, someone we can other, someone we can blame, someone whose existence makes us feel morally superior without requiring us to actually be moral.

Because being actually moral is hard. It requires confronting the powerful. It requires challenging systems. It requires introspection and sacrifice. But attacking the vulnerable? That is easy. That costs nothing. And in a country where so much is uncertain, where poverty crushes hope and insecurity stalks daily life, having someone to look down on provides cheap comfort.

Now, let us talk about tradition. Let us talk about “our culture” and “African values” and how homosexuality is “un-African.”

Here is an inconvenient truth: the laws we use to criminalise homosexuality are not African. They are British. They were imposed by Victorian colonisers who brought their own sexual anxieties and moral panics and codified them into law, and we ran with them and stapled them on the notice board. They were designed to regulate the morality of conquered peoples, to ‘civilise the natives’.

Pre-colonial Africa had diverse gender and sexual expressions. The historical record shows evidence of same-sex relationships, gender fluidity, and non-binary identities across various African societies. Yes, these were not mainstream or always celebrated, but neither were they grounds for execution. Live and let live was a code our ancestors embodied. They existed within complex social systems that the colonisers could not or would not understand.

So when we call homosexuality “un-African,” we are actually saying it is un-Victorian…and that in itself is also problematic because gay people have always existed in their society, and the tolerance of it was dependent on class structure. When we invoke tradition to justify violence, we are invoking the traditions of our oppressors. We kept the coloniser’s moral panic and rebranded it as authenticity.

The same religious texts now weaponised against LGBTQ+ people were brought by missionaries who considered our own indigenous spirituality demonic. We converted, adopted their sexual shame, and now wield it as if it were ancestral wisdom. This is not cultural preservation. This is cultural amnesia dressed up as righteousness. If homosexuality didn’t affect rainfall or harvesting of maize and yam then, things that were central to the economic structures of our ancestors, pray tell, how does it affect us now?

If we want to decolonise, let us start by decolonising our moral frameworks. If we want to even go the Christian route where we consider homosexuality as sin, the ideal thing to do, as requested by Jesus is to pray for them. Let us stop letting dead British legislators and missionary societies dictate whom we should hate.

There is something theatrical about how we condemn homosexuality in Nigeria. It is never quiet. It is never private. It is always loud, always public, always performed for an audience.

We do not simply disapprove; we announce our disapproval. We do not simply believe it is wrong; we stage our righteousness. Social media posts declaring “God forbid!” accumulate likes. Pastors preach against it from pulpits to thunderous “Amens!” Senate stamps on prohibition bills to gain mass approval. Young men film themselves attacking perceived gay people to prove their masculinity to their peers.

This is not morality. This is performance. This is virtue signalling for the “moral majority.” And like all performances, it requires an audience and rewards: social approval, religious validation, political capital, the intoxicating feeling of being right and righteous.

The performance is particularly seductive because it requires no real sacrifice. Condemning homosexuality costs you nothing if you are heterosexual. It demands no self-examination, no change in your own behaviour, no confrontation with your own failings. You can be cruel to others whilst feeling holy. You can participate in violence whilst believing you are defending virtue.

Compare this to the moral demands of actual righteousness: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, fighting corruption, challenging injustice, loving your neighbour, protecting the vulnerable. These require resources, time, courage, sacrifice. But hating gay people? That is free. That is easy. It makes you a moral authority without requiring you to be moral.

Why was that young man’s death public? Why did it require witnesses? Why did people film it? Why did they share the videos? Why did they applaud?

Because the violence was not just about punishment. It was about spectacle. It was about sending a message. It was about performing dominance and reinforcing hierarchy. It was about collective participation in cruelty as a form of social bonding.

Mob violence is always theatrical. It requires an audience because the violence itself is not the point; the display of power is the point. The message is not just “this person did wrong,” but “this is what happens when you step out of line. This is what we do to the other. This is who we are.”

And the applause? It is the most chilling part. Because applause is how audiences reward performers. The people who killed that young man were not just murderers; they were performers. And the people who applauded were not just spectators; they were participants. They validated the violence. They gave it social approval. They turned murder into entertainment, atrocity into spectacle.

This is how dehumanisation works. You strip someone of their humanity by making their suffering into a show. You create distance between yourself and their pain by framing it as justice, as righteousness, as necessary. You kill them not as individuals with families and dreams and fears, but as symbols, as warnings, as examples.

And once we have normalised this kind of violence, once we have made it acceptable to kill someone for whom they love, we have opened a door that is very hard to close. Because mob justice focuses on the vulnerable and oppressed, which Nigeria has bountifully. Today it is gay people. Tomorrow it is “witches.” The day after, it is people who practise the wrong religion, belong to the wrong ethnic group, hold the wrong political views, and even migrants. But never the corrupt leaders. No, we leave those ones for Karma.

The logic of mob violence is that someone must always be the other, someone must always be the target. And none of us are safe in a society where violence can be justified by declaring someone other enough.

We need to be very clear about what actually threatens Nigeria. 

It is not who people love in the privacy of their homes.

It is state failure. It is the collapse of public education. It is the decay of healthcare infrastructure. It is endemic corruption that siphons resources meant for development. It is insecurity that makes daily life a gamble with death. It is unemployment that crushes the hopes of millions of Nigerian youths. It is poverty that leaves families choosing between food and medicine. It is the breakdown of systems that should protect citizens but instead prey on them.

These are the real crises. These are the actual threats to our survival, our dignity, our future.

But these crises are hard to confront. They require challenging powerful interests. They require systemic change. They require resources, organisation, courage, sacrifice. And most importantly, they require us to confront our own complicity in maintaining broken systems.

It is so much easier to blame someone else. It is so much easier to find a scapegoat. It is so much easier to believe that the problem is not corruption or inequality or state failure, but those people over there who love differently.

This is the function of moral panics: they distract. They redirect anger away from those with power towards those without it. They turn legitimate grievances about material conditions into manufactured outrage about symbolic threats. They let the powerful off the hook by giving the powerless someone to punch down on.

Politicians love this. Religious leaders love this. Anyone with something to hide or power to protect loves this. Because as long as we are busy hunting gay people, we are not demanding accountability from them. As long as we are focused on who people sleep with, we are not focused on who is stealing from us.

The obsession with homosexuality is not about protecting society. It is about protecting power by distracting from its failures.

So I return to my question: So s/he’s gay, what about it?

What about two adults loving each other affects your life? What about their relationship in their bedroom impacts your marriage, your children, your livelihood, your salvation?

The answer is: nothing. It affects nothing. Their relationship and love do not diminish yours. Their happiness does not steal yours. Their existence does not threaten yours.

But here is what does affect all of us: a society where mob violence is acceptable. A society where we can kill someone for being different and call it justice. A society where cruelty masquerades as morality and violence hides behind righteousness. A society where we are so desperate for someone to look down on that we will murder to maintain the hierarchy.

That affects all of us. Because none of us are safe in a society that has normalised dehumanisation.

Another person’s consensual adult relationship is nobody’s business. It is certainly not worth a life. And if you believe it is, then the problem is not their sexuality—it is your morality!

Now, a young man is dead. His name was someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s friend. He had dreams and fears and a life that mattered. And he was killed not because he hurt anyone, not because he stole anything, not because he committed violence—but because he loved someone.

And we applauded.

This is who we have become. This is what our manufactured moral panic has wrought. This is the cost of our borrowed outrage and performative righteousness.

We can choose differently. We can choose to mind our business. We can choose to focus our energy on actual threats rather than imagined ones. We can choose to build a society based on dignity rather than dominance, on respect rather than hierarchy, on humanity rather than hate.

But that requires us to confront our own complicity, to examine our own prejudices, to question our own assumptions. It requires us to choose courage over comfort, justice over convenience, humanity over hate.

So I will ask one more time: So s/he’s gay. What about it?

If your answer is anything other than “nothing,” then the crisis is not out there. It is in here. It is us. It is YOU!