Anti-Gay Law: Ignore US threat, lawyers tell FG

Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, and other lawyers across the country have flayed the threat by President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, to sanction Nigeria and other countries that fail to make laws to accommodate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer and Intersex, LGBTQI, people.

In their separate reactions to the threat, the senior legal practitioners, maintained that it would be wrong for America to attempt to use its superpower to force sovereign African countries to embrace abhorrent sexual orientations.

President Biden had issued a presidential memorandum aimed at expanding the protection of the rights of LGBTQI people worldwide. He threatened to use full range of diplomatic and assistance tools, which may include financial sanctions and visa restrictions, against homophobic countries like Nigeria that retained its anti-gay posture. Nigeria under former President Goodluck Jonathan had in January 2014, signed the Same-Sex-Marriage (Prohibition) Act, despite spirited effort by erstwhile US President, Barrack Obama, to abort the law.

The anti-gay law in Nigeria prescribed a prison term of between 10 and 14 years for anyone caught flouting the law, either by cohabitation between same-sex sexual partners, public show of same-sex relationship, registration, operation or participation in gay clubs, societies and organisation, amongst others.

The pressure on Nigeria to repeal its anti-gay laws ebbed with the emergence of the President Donald Trump’s administration. However, it appeared the change of leadership in the US came with revived move to compel countries like Nigeria to reconsider their stoic stance against the LGBTQI community. President Biden, in his recent memo, called for sanctions against foreign countries that restrict rights of LGBTQI persons. Vanguard