To the British Council

To take part in a live debate on the BBC World Service (World Have Your Say). The President elect was due to grace the event, but he couldn't make it. The Chairman of the PDP was there instead. There were two shows, one after the other, for different parts of the world. The audience was one part sycophantic and nine parts critical. A revealing moment came when the compere asked who voted. Eight hands out of approximately forty went up. In the second session, someone from Germany called up and asked about homosexuality in Nigeria. As one, a homophobic chorus rose up, with the usual diatribes about it 'not being our culture' and then reflexing to talking about HIV. It never ceases to astonish me that people here associate HIV with homosexuality, when the reality is that most transmission takes place in heterosexual relationships (wife trusting husband so no-condom, husband straying elsewhere without condom. QED)

It is always disappointing to be close to such medieval views. But to be surrounded in the flesh by snarling visceral hatred was toxic, to say the least. I managed to sneak in a comment about centuries of pre-colonial homosexuality, as witnessed by the yan dauda. To which someone replied that they have always been segregated. A little later, when someone mentioned that Nigerians are the happiest people on the planet, another member of the audience mentioned that 'even Fela had a song called Shuffering and Shmiling'. I couldn't help but let her know off mic that actually, the one who carried death in his pouch was being ironique.