Exceptionally brilliant TV talk show host Funmi Iyanda has finally
opened up about how Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) shut down her
live shows after she interviewed openly gay Nigerian man, Bisi Alimi, on
her popular breakfast show, New Dawn, in 2004.
I remember this story pretty well. After Bisi Alimi appeared on that
show his life changed forever. He couldn't even return to UNILAG where
he was a student at the time. He was forced to go into hiding and
eventually relocated abroad. Read Funmi's story after the cut...
It’s
a good thing my meddling mum took Musibau off his alcoholic dad just
before that wretch of a father was sent to jail for raping a minor. My
mother went missing a year later so I never saw Musibau again but that’s
another story.
He was 15 but he looked 12, l was seven but l looked 10. People
generally looked weird in my neighbourhood, but nobody thought anyone
one weird – odd maybe but life was odd wasn’t it?
Musibau was the first to run into Miss John who spoke Queen’s English
and walked like a girl. Everybody called him Miss John, I have no idea
why. But we were interested in him because we needed to walk through his
garden to climb into Baba Olugbo’s compound for the agbalumo tree.
Nobody dared walked through Baba Olugbo’s compound to get to that tree.
He was a wealthy molue bus entrepreneur with seven wives, a distended,
shirtless stomach, marijuana thickened growl and a fast horsewhip for
clueless kids.
I had four older sisters and two younger brothers but I felt closest to
Musibau perhaps because we had a shared tendency to get into trouble
and a common dislike of Nureni. Nureni was crippled by childhood polio
and so dragged himself around on his muscular torso except when he went
to school wearing his leg braces and crutches, which made him
vulnerable.
We did not like Nureni; he had a caustic tongue, a reptilian ability to
wrestle you down then strangle you and was genius at maths. He was
faster moving dragging himself than he was on his crutches. He hated
those crutches but he really liked Mulika.
Mulika was one of the two daughters of Alhaji Abara whose two wives
wore hijabs so you couldn’t tell one from the other. I of course could;
Mulika’s mother was the one with the two PelĂ© on her cheeks, right above
her haughty cheekbones. A stunning woman. I knew because I saw them in
the women’s quarters every time I went to play with Mulika, who had
inherited her mother’s looks.
We all loved Alhaji Abara because he had the best spread for breaking
fasts at Ramadan. It didn’t matter whether you were Christian, Animist
or Muslim. You could come break the fast on divine akara, even if you
didn’t fast. He used to say only Allah sees the good heart. We all
attended Koran classes because it was fun and then went to church on
Sunday because of the music and dancing.
My mother didn’t mind us going to church and Koran classes, in fact she
supplemented all that with occasional visits to seers and herbalists
who read our signs and cleansed our aura. Everyone did that, even that
nasty priggish Catholic Mama Uche who acted like she was the pope’s
first cousin.
Miss John always pretended not to see us sneaking through his garden
and jumping over Baba Olugbo’s fence to pluck some agbalumo. A few
times, Baba Olugbo would see us and come running belly first, whip
flaying but we always out ran him, Nureni in front and Mulika, scarf
flapping, at the back.
We never got caught until the day Nureni came on those damn crutches
that made him slow. Baba Olugbo caught Mulika by her scarf and I tripped
over Nureni’s crutches.
We knew we were in hot soup because once Baba Olugbo finished whipping
us, he’d hand us over to our respective parents each of whom would apply
equal supplementary punishment. That meant my tough mother’s hour-long
frog jumps, Alhaji’s half day Koran writing and Nureni’s aunty’s
numbing, monotonous curses.
We didn’t mind the whipping so much, a few lashes, a couple of pain
killers and we’d be back trying to get more agbalumo’s off that tree.
Once you’ve been whipped, you don’t get whipped again on the same day
for the same offence – even the adults had some sense.
So it was I laid on my back staring at Baba Olugbo’s protruding belly
button, Nureni’s fast breathing in my ear, dreading the inevitable –
when suddenly Miss John walked up.
Perhaps it was his Queen’s English or our lucky day but he gently took
the whip off Baba Olugbo’s clenched wrist and laughingly told him he had
asked us to get some of the ripe agablumo for him seeing as it was
abundant.
Baba Olugbo did not want to look like a mingy old fart; he was after
all a rich man with political ambition. He grudgingly let us go, and I
swore to Nureni and Musibau later that I saw Miss John wink out of a
kohl-lined eye.
I remembered this story recently when I was asked why I, as a straight
celebrity, a word I dislike, I support Bisi Alimi and LGBT rights.
Nigeria of today seems completely homophobic, xenophobic and religiously polarized as though that is the way we always were.
This would be an incomplete narrative. The way we are today is a result
of the political and economic breakdown of our country, a topic for
another day. However the ensuing widening income gaps, extreme poverty,
illiteracy and crime has encouraged distrust and exclusion at every
level.
My sense of justice, fairness and rationality supersede any latent
sense of social propriety. Gay rights, civil rights, religious rights,
gender rights, child rights are human rights. Justice, equity and
fairness are my idea of morality.
I was a little girl who grew up in the same neighbourhood as gay Miss
John, Muslim cleric Alhaji Abara, disabled Nureni, Mulika in her
headscarves and pious Catholic Igbo Mama Uche.
I saw differences in ethnicity; religion, gender, class and sexuality
but these differences did not carry judgement. We lived together mostly
harmoniously; any lack of harmony was on account of individual bad
behaviour not genetic differences or lifestyle choices.
I miss that Nigeria. I guess in a way l still live in that Nigeria in my head.
And that was why in 2004 I risked my career to put Bisi on my sofa and
conduct Nigeria’s first interview of an openly gay man on national
television.
Bisi and I did pay a hefty price for that action, he more than myself.
Was it worth it? I’m afraid l have never had the luxury of absolute
self-congratulations or flagellation. What I do know is, at that moment,
it felt right. And every moment since then, it has felt right.
I do what feels right by a conscience conditioned by my justice-minded,
meddling mother, a childhood experiencing the beauty of diversity and a
belief in our common humanity.
Perhaps the childhood I speak about was a dream. If that is the case
then that dream is my vision of the future to come for Nigeria.