5 Popular Nigerian Celebrities You Never Knew Were Gay

Despite the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act signed into law in Nigeria on January 7 last year which prohibits homosexuals from meeting in groups of two or more, stops them from getting married or involved in any civil unions, criminalising gay clubs and events, there are a few Nigerian men who couldn’t be bothered about all of this as they are who they are and no law change them into what they are not. Today, we will be listing 5 popular Nigerian men who despite the discrimination that comes with being gay alongside the law that has been put in place, they still fly their flag high.

1. Kehinde Bademosi.

The advert guru shocked the world in January 2015, when he came out of the closet via a statement on his Facebook page. Kehinde, who worked with popular creative firm Orange Academy, was married to a woman for 6-years, same woman who knew he was gay yet went along with being his wife. His coming out statement partly read; When I first told my ex-wife that I was gay, we were far from being married. I wanted her to find other men honorably, who had a thing for women. I never did. I ‘swear down.’ I was only obeying the popular demand of traditions. Now, this was my terrible mistake. No one should live their life based on dogmas and other people’s expectations. As far as I could remember, even though I was always dating girls, I had always preferred being with a man.” Kehinde is also living with HIV and recently got married to his lover in the US.

2. Bisi Alimi

Bisi became the first Nigerian to openly declare that he is gay and the ever blunt Bisi did it on live TV. Bisi came out as a gay man on the now defunct New Dawn With Funmi Iyanda(NTA) program back in 2004. Bisi, who is a father to a son and is now married, is also an advocate for HIV/LGBT rights. Speaking on his coming out, Bisi said; ”It was principally for me to just be on control of the narrative. I wanted people to know that the actor they saw on TV, who they’d come to admire because of the character he was playing, was a gay guy. New Dawn with Fumni Iyanda was one of the biggest TV shows in Nigeria and the first thing that happened after I came out was it was pulled off the air. On my show, my character was killed off and nobody gave me a script again. I became broke and started enduring three years of intensive assault. Before I did what I did, the president of Nigeria was saying, ‘There are no gays in this country!’ And this crazy boy went on TV with his sparkle shoes and said, ‘Ah, excuse me! There’s one here!’

3. Reverend Jide Macaulay

Reverend Macaulay became Nigeria’s first openly gay preacher. He is the founder of House of Rainbow Fellowship, a secret gay church situated in Lagos. Not long after a major newspaper brought the light on his homosexual church, he began to ger threats to his life prompting him to relocate to another country. Reverend Macaulay is however still running his gay church in the UK and has continued to speak out publicly against the anti-gay law that was passed in Nigeria recently.

4. John Amaechi

The 47-year old Amaechi born to a Nigerian father and an English Mother came out as a gay man in February 2007. Amaechi opened up about his Homosexuality on ESPN’s Outside the Lines program. He became the first NBA player to come out as a gay man. He also talked about his homosexuality in memoir Man in the Middle and has since been regarded as “one of the world’s most high-profile gay athletes”. In an interview with Scotland on Sunday, Amaechi spoke about gays in the NBA: “If you look at our league, minorities aren’t very well represented. There’s hardly any Hispanic players, no Asian-Americans, so that there’s no openly gay players is no real surprise. It would be like an alien dropping down from space. There’d be fear, then panic: they just wouldn’t know how to handle it.”

5. John Adewoye

Adewoye a Nigerian and a former priest in the Catholic Church. He went on a self-imposed exile due to his sexual orientation but returned in 2013 as an openly gay man to visit his family. Despite his fears, he was well received. Photo Credit: Getty

 

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