Nigerian man granted assylum by U.S after fleeing anti-gay persecution in Nigeria

A Nigerian man who fled Nigeria in 2016 because of the law that criminalizes same sex, took to his Twitter page to raise an awareness on the thousands of people who suffer back home.

The Nigerian man, Edafe Okporo who is now a refugee and assylum seekers advocate in the United States, wrote on Twitter;

#HowIResist 2016 I became a refugee because of a law that criminalizes same sex in Nigeria, I am free in U.S but thousands of people suffer back home in Nigeria.

Edafe Okporo who disclosed that he  fled to the U.S after he got to know that his life was in danger for being gay, opened up on all he had to pass through while he was living in Nigeria in his story with Yahoo news.

“It was not safe for me to live in Nigeria anymore,” he tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I had to flee.” Okporo’s sexuality first became an issue in his community when his parents sent him to an all-boys secondary school.

“I behaved kind of feminine sometimes and they wanted me to experience how it is to be masculine,” he remembers of his family’s reasoning. While at school, he had his first sexual experience with one of his classmates.

“It was consensual, but because the guy was from a Muslim family, he said it wasn’t consensual,” he said. Okporo was suspended for two weeks, which is how his family first learned he was gay.

Edafe also talked about his parents who treid to “cure” him by taking him to a practitioner of traditional African medicine. “They cut some marks on my stomach about one inch long in about 25 different places,” he remembers. .

“They tried to put some medicine and say they were curing me of being gay.” Okporo was attacked on his birthday on July 23, 2016. “I was attacked by members of the community. .

They dragged me out, they beat me up, they were saying that ‘[being] gay is advocating against our religion, and we don’t want people who are possessed to be in our community.’ Stuff like that.

While they were beating me up I blacked up, I woke up the next day in a clinic. The nurse said I was brought there by an old lady who had pity on me.”

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