(VIDEO) Nigerian Gay Rights Activist, Bisi Alimi Speaks To CNN’s Christiane Amanpour On The 'Jail The Gays' Bill

Nigerian gay rights activist, public speaker, blog writer and HIV/LGBT advocate who achieved notoriety when he became the first Nigerian to come out of the closet on television, Bisi Alimi was on CNN to talk about his experience and the new law. Excerpts from the interview below!...Continue after this cut...In 2004, Bisi Alimi did an extraordinary thing.He went on national television and told his fellow Nigerians that he was gay.

“There were so many things we don’t talk about,” Alimi told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday. “My career was on the line, I was going to be outed by the media.”

It was better, he decided, to come out of the closet on his own terms......

“I have a responsibility to stand up for the community, to give a face to the community, to demystify the old arguments that there are no homosexuals in Nigeria,” People were not ready to educate themselves. And this created a lot of problems for the LGBT community in Nigeria.”I couldn’t get a job, I left university, nobody was going to employ me, my life was constantly in danger, I was always beaten, arrested by the police, discharged.Parliament passed the bill last year, so why did the president sign it now?

“He has been boxed to a corner,” Alimi said, who believes President Jonathan is increasingly politically alienated.

I know, like so many other Nigerians know, that this is a distraction. As for those fellow countrymen, Alimi believes that for many, their intolerant views are bolstered by religion. How many Nigerians know…what this law means? Or how many Nigerians have an understanding outside of religion what exactly we talk about when we talk about sexuality?”“Why then should religion be the basis of putting a law in place in a secular state?”

He would eventually seek asylum in the UK, where he now lives. He became the first Nigerian to declare his homosexuality on television. In that same year, 2004, Alimi had been diagnosed with HIV. He had been working for years as an activist with the gay community in Nigeria, and was programing director for an HIV-advocacy group.

 

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