Sitting on the landing page of The Lagos State Government’s Facebook account are 6 photos parading “28 adults” who were “arraigned for engaging in homosexuality before the Yaba Magistrate Court” yesterday August 3, 2017. 12 minors were simultaneously being arraigned before an Ebute-Metta Magistrate for the same offence.

In Nigeria, following a Jonathanian-Era law that criminalises all acts of homosexuality and all homosexual associations, gay rights are next to non-existent. In the 12 Northern States, the maximum penalty for engaging in any acts of homosexuality is death by stoning. The way the Shar’ia law works is that this penalty applies to all Muslims as well as those who have voluntarily consented to being tried by the Shari’a courts. For the offenders who do not fall under this category and those who reside in Southern Nigeria (South West, South South, the South East and other parts of the country) the maximum punishment for engaging/abetting homosexual activity is 14 years’ imprisonment. The Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act criminalises every marriage contract or civil union entered into between persons of same sex, and provides penalties for the solemnisation and witnessing of any act of homosexuality throughout the country.

And so last Saturday, the 31st of July in Owode-Onirin, Lagos, the Lagos State taskforce, supposedly at the behest of the residents of that area, raided a hotel and arrested 70 individuals allegedly caught ‘performing homosexual acts’. There are reports that the individuals arrested were only attending an HIV counseling and testing event organized by an NGO.

According to the “All Out” website, which has a petition out to the Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, “they were working together as a community to organise an HIV awareness and prevention event, held in a public space in a Lagos hotel”.

Almost a week later, after 28 of the 70 men arrested had been released Sunday morning, and a petition had been put out urging the release of the “innocent men”, the Lagos State Government arraigned them in court yesterday on the following charge:

“On or about 29th July, 2017, at Vintage Hotel, No. 999 Ikorodu Road/Toyin Close, Weigh Bridge, Owode Onirin, Lagos, in the Lagos Magisterial District, did engage in gay activities by permitting male persons to have canal knowledge of themselves against the order of nature and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 261 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.” 

But LASG did not deem it fit to stop just there. They thought it would be wise to celebrate their impressive police and prosecutorial achievement by parading these men in front of the Magistrate Court and taking at least 6 photos of them for publishing on social media.

As any reasonable citizen would ask: “to what end was this act of throwing their faces out there?”

We cannot pretend that there is any counter-narrative to provide to that act of callousness. So we won’t. It was mean, insensitive and worst still intentional. This is because the same Lagos State Government prosecuting the 12 minors in another court knew not parade the youngsters.

In Nigeria, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty – that’s a fundamental right sufficiently guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution – and without going to the stress of explaining how discriminatory and unjust the very law that criminalises their alleged homosexuality is, it makes even less sense to try to throw these men out to an already largely homophobic society that will crucify and judge them before the gavel comes down.

We did not have to do random sampling of Nigerians to become certain that the Government’s action was like throwing the accuseds to the wolves. Proof was right there in the Facebook comments. Here’s the very first one:

How does the Lagos State Government reconcile these kinds of vindictive comments from people who probably have very little or no idea of the facts of the case against the accuseds with its own duty to secure the lives (and property) of the accused but innocent citizens?

Does putting their faces out there advance their prosecution in any way or form? Of course it does not

At the very heart of it, what the State Government has just done is to first act as though these men admitted to being guilty of a heinous offence that requires public censure. Also, they just went out of their way to put these innocent men in harms way. Their photos have been released to a very homophobic so, who thanks to the public nature of court documents, also have access to their names and other details. What then do the officials who sanctioned the publishing of these photographs imagine will happen if the accused persons are eventually acquitted or otherwise released on bail?