My name is Remi Makinde, my pronouns are she/they. I work for an organisation called the Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs). TIERs is a community-based and community-led organisation advocating for the rights of LGBTQI persons and other minorities in Nigeria. We are situated in Lagos, however, we have a national reach and we maintain partnerships with other LGBTQI organisations across the country.
TIERs started as a gap that exists for the lack of programming for HIV among men who sleep with men, and other LGBTQI persons. At the time, as far back as the 90s, a significant number of gay men were dying due to the government’s refusal to assist individuals who were in same-sex relationships or identified as LGBTQI. In response, a collective of individuals united to establish an organisation dedicated to advocating for LGBTQI individuals, with a particular focus on HIV prevention and research. This organisation was formed to address the critical needs of the LGBTQI community during those challenging times.
In the last ten years, TIERs has evolved from being primarily centred on HIV-related initiatives to evolving into a feminist-led organisation. This shift stems from our acknowledgement of the interconnected nature of our challenges and the understanding that our efforts cannot be effective in isolation. Consequently, our current focus is on fostering allyship and engaging in advocacy at the crossroads of human rights. This change reflects our commitment to addressing a broader range of issues and promoting collaboration across various fronts.
Building Supportive Communities
In the last 18 years, we’ve been able to identify lawyers and media personnel, as well as build the capacity of young LGBTQI persons who are now taking charge of building their own community and passing on the knowledge.
I like to say that amidst all of the challenges that we face, the community is thriving. It is very interesting to find lawyers that are open to working with us, lawyers who are either queer themselves or who are allies of the community. We have medical doctors who are very open to working with us. We have psychologists who will provide inclusive therapy to LGBTQI persons because that’s part of the service that we provide to the community.
It’s very interesting to see how the community has grown. There’s a lot of online presence because of the capacity that we’ve been able to provide to LGBTQI persons, young LGBTQI persons who have now absorbed this knowledge and then made it into their own. This allows for the work to continue.
“I like to say that amidst all of the challenges that we face, the community is thriving. It is very interesting to find lawyers that are open to working with us, lawyers who are either queer themselves or who are allies of the community.”
Using the Law and Courts to Advance Equality
The other success I’m going to quickly mention is in terms of strategic litigation. One example is Egbeda 57, where we see the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act was exploited to criminalize LGBTQI individuals for simply attending a birthday celebration. The case lasted about two years, and in 2020, the court decided to strike out the case, even though that was a very disappointing conclusion, given that the police, and law enforcement officers, were unable to present any real evidence.
We feel like ordinarily cases like that should be dismissed, and being struck out means that the law enforcement officers could come back and charge these same persons again on the premise that they now have newfound evidence. The ideal judgment should have been a dismissal and not being struck out.
However, we would count that as a success.
Before the Egbeda 57 case, our approach often involved attempting to appease the police or law enforcement officers through police bail payments. However, in this instance, we took a firm stance and decided against such practices. Instead, we opted to contest the case in court and won. This experience provides us with an opportunity to establish a precedent concerning LGBTQI human rights in Nigeria.
The second case I am going to talk about is the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act challenge case, which originally began about eight years ago. Due to the challenges we faced in identifying the right legal team to take this case forward, we were only able to consolidate the case in 2020. 15 Plaintiffs including TIERs came together to challenge the discriminatory provisions of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.
It’s important to clarify that TIERs and the other 14 Plaintiffs did not challenge the entire SSMPA. Instead, we focused on challenging specific sections – 4(1), 5(2), and 5(3) – of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which encroached upon the rights of freedom of association and expression.
In October 2022, the legal journey to decriminalising sections 4(1), 5(2) and S5(3) of the Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) finally received a favourable judgement. The presiding Judge rendered a favourable judgment by declaring these sections unconstitutional. The Judge described these particular sections as an overkill, even though it was acknowledged that the rights to freedom of association and expression are not absolute.
Providing the Evidence Needed for Change
The third category of success that we’ve recorded in the last 18 years is the ability to do research in terms of documenting human rights violations that occurred in Nigeria. In the last three years that I have joined TIERs, we have documented at least 1200 human rights violations against LGBTQI persons based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or sexual characteristics.
This helps us to provide evidence-based research. We’re documenting these so that we can engage stakeholders and the Nigerian government to say, hey, this is something that is occurring. These are not fake stories; these are lived experiences of the LGBTQI community. In July 2023, we used some of these cases at the UPR so that we could provide recommendations to the Nigerian government to take violations against LGBTQI persons seriously.
“We’re documenting these so that we can engage stakeholders and the Nigerian government to say, hey, this is something that is occurring. These are not fake stories; these are lived experiences of the LGBTQI community.”
Promoting Public Understanding and Acceptance
The fourth thing that I’m going to talk about is the ability to create alternative narratives in terms of storytelling. In the last ten years, I would say that there’s a lot of bad or negative storytelling around LGBTQI persons. It is either the media portraying us as demonic or portraying us as people who should not be reckoned with in society, but the ability of the community to tell our own stories has allowed us to reduce negative narratives around LGBTQI persons.
And this has been very useful in terms of the social perception survey that we publish every two years. The most recent social perception survey has been the one documented in 2022, which shows the difference between where we were in 2015 when the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act was newly introduced, where 95% of the Nigerian population was in support of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, even though the government had presented 98% as the number of people who support the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.
From our research on the Social Perception survey from 2022, that number is down by 35%, which means that all of the storytelling that we’ve been doing, all of the capacity strengthening, all of the human rights or National Human Rights Commission engagement are yielding results. So these are some of the success stories that I can share today, thank you.
To learn more about the work of TIERs, go to their website. To support organisations like TIERs in their vital work in protecting LGBTQI communities around the world, donate here.