anti-gay nigeria loses bid to host commonwealth games

By Duane Wells (Gaywired)

NIGERIA – November 16, 2007: The Commonwealth Games Federation, a multinational sporting event in which some 5,000 athletes from 53 former British colonies, the United Kingdom and Mozambique compete every four years, has chosen Glasgow, Scotland, as the host city for the 2014 games. Nigeria’s Abuja had been considered a strong contender to host the event, but the country’s homophobic policies coupled with questions raised by the African nation’s gay activists about ongoing persecution of gay and lesbian Nigerians seem to have derailed the city’s bid.

The Commonwealth Games Federation constitution specifically says that "there shall be no discrimination against any country or person on any grounds whatsoever including race, colour, gender, religion or politics.” According to published reports, there was a fear that many of the gay and lesbian athletes set to compete in the 2014 Federation Games might be at risk of arrest and violence if the Games were to go ahead in Nigeria, where homosexuality and same-sex marriage are illegal and where the Nigerian parliament has been trying to pass a controversial law introduced by former President Olusegun Obasanjo banning gay rights organizations.

Moreover, Nigerian law goes so far as to dictate that anyone who has "carnal knowledge of any person against order of nature or permits a male to have carnal knowledge of him" can be imprisoned for 14 years.

These laws fly in the face of the Commonwealth Games Federations stated goals and values and played in serious part in the decision of the organization to hold the games in Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city.

Still there is hope for Nigeria if they can clean up their act apparently.

According to Pink News, Davis Mac-Iyalla, director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, who led a delegation that met with the chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) in London this past fall and presented an 11-page report setting out why it should reject the bid by the Nigerian city of Abuja to host the 2014 Games, said of the CGF’s decision: "To be honest, we were not really expecting this unresponsive government to take sufficient remedial action in time. We hope however that they have woken up to the fact that they cannot expect that the world will no longer turn a blind eye to brutal injustices and oppressive laws against the ordinary citizens of Nigeria."

Meanwhile, one of Great Britain's most outspoken equality advocates, Peter Tatchell, who was also a part of the delegation that presented to the CGF added: "I would love an African country to host the games, but not Nigeria," said Tatchell according to GayNZ.com. "Nigeria should be offered the 2018 Games, on the condition that within the next three years it makes serious progress on eradicating corruption, election fraud and human rights violations," he continued.