Matthew K. By Gichohi, Ayodele Sogunro and Liv Tonnesen, The Loop
Queer activists in Nigeria have won a high court ruling declaring parts of the country’s same-sex marriage (ban) law unconstitutional. Yet registrars, banks, police and landlords refuse to honor the ruling, making it a mere ‘paper victory’. Matthew K Gichohi, Ayodele SogunroAnd Liv Tonnesen Argue that queer rights are eroded by bureaucracy, not law
Victory on paper
A court can open a door. But very few people in Nigeria can get through it safely.
In 2014, Nigeria introduced gay marriage (Prohibition) Act (SSMPA). Although the law is a criminal law, it also targets the infrastructure of queer life: meeting, registration, support and visibility. Human Rights Watch documented How the SSMPA has intensified extortion, arbitrary arrests, and service disruptions. Public health studies have shown that people’s fear levels about seeking health care increased after 2014, with measurable consequences for HIV prevention. The force of law rests less on the prosecution that fear authorizes it, and on the institutions that teach it to deny it.
A queer worker described their NGO’s action plan to us: ‘We had to change our targets from LGBT to marginalized groups and when we had trouble registering (as an NGO) we had to add something on health. A lawyer helped us.’
In 2022, part of a judgment of a Federal High Court in Lagos was announced SSMPA is unconstitutional. Yet activists and country guidelines still describe registration and organizational life as limited and risky. Registration means being legally incorporated; Status that allows companies to bank, hire staff and receive funding. Organizational life follows: meetings, advocacy, and reporting to donors. In the interview we conducted for WriteAct project As late as 2025, Nigerian queer activists continue to fall back on a phrase to describe the High Court ruling: a victory on paper. Registrars ignore it, banks override it, police bypass it and landlords refuse to recognize it.
Administrative Afterlife of Criminal Law
Cracking a provision open to the court does not automatically reach the bank officer or registrar. This is a broad view Strange laws in AfricaCaptures the texture of struggles, struggles across legal, political, and administrative arenas.
Queer lawfare is fought not only in the courts, but in the offices, forms and compliance checks that decide whether queer organizations can exist.
The gap between a legal opening and its administrative adoption is significant. SSMPA forms, rental agreements, compliance checks, donor reports, and the daily vigilance of those who know the law can turn against them. Queer Lawfare isn’t just in the courts. This is decided in the office, forms and compliance checks that determine whether or not different companies can exist
The Nigerian state: the multifaceted hydra
The Nigerian state is a hydra. One head police. Another is the Corporate Affairs Commission. Other principals include courts, ministries, the National Human Rights Commission, landlords, banks and clinics. Each requires a different strategy to deal with. A court case that helps in one case exposes workers to another. A name that works for a health provider is dangerous on the registration form.
This makes visibility politics, not policy, and its risks are not shared equally. For some activists, coded language such as ‘key population’ seems to be deleted; For others, it’s survival. Class, geography, religion, age, gender identity, and organizational position shape who can speak openly and who must remain coded. Position here means an organization’s position in the movement – its funding, reach and influence. Good resources may risk visibility; Little ones can’t. Visibility may be safer in parts of Lagos or Abuja than in northern states governed under Sharia law. Within movement spaces historically shaped by HIV and organized around men who have sex with men (MSM), lesbian, bisexual, trans, and intersex concerns are still pushed to the margins.
Queer lawfare is not just about whether the ‘movement’ is won or lost, but about which constituencies can access protections, funding and services.
Queer lawfare is therefore also the politics of risk distribution: who gets to dare and who absorbs the backlash. If we look at this through an administrative lens, we see that legislation is not only about whether ‘movements’ win or lose, but about which diverse constituencies can access protection, funding, documents, services and protection.
The pattern is the same across the region
Nigeria is no exception. Recent legislative and administrative actions Ghana, UgandaAnd Senegal Just don’t punish intimacy. They increase legal control Advocacy, support, fundingCommunication, and organizational life. Daman travels through administrative institutions before reaching the courtroom. A law that criminalizes the ‘promotion’ of LGBTIQ issues hurts an editor, a donor, a teacher, a landlord. A law requiring neighbors to report what they see turns families and employers into an extension of state power.
The same lens reshapes how we read recognition. Criminalization of Botswana, Namibia’s recognition of foreign same-sex marriagesAnd Kenya’s Emerging Jurisprudence on Gender Markers The real victory is. Their meaning depends on what happens next: whether registries comply, whether immigration officials respect family ties, whether banks and clinics treat recognition as real. Kenya is striking because the fight is clearly administrative – about document That reduced humiliation and exclusion. Bureaucratic terrain can discipline, but it can also liberate.
Queer rights require infrastructure
Rights require organizations that can monitor implementation, pay lawyers, run shelters, document violations, and respond when people are arrested or evicted. When funds collapse, rights become diluted. Nigerian activists describe stop-work orders, project closures, pay cuts and the loss of international cover that once made repression more expensive. Without that infrastructure, a right can exist in legal language while disappearing in the places where people need it most: clinics, shelters, police stations, registries, banks.
Without an infrastructure to monitor implementation, pay lawyers or run shelters, a right can exist in legal language while people disappear where they need it most.
For readers of the Global North, this will unsettle any simple geography of progress and reaction. Legal regulation of queer life in Africa is intertwined with colonial legal legacies, international religious organizations, donor governance, HIV financing and migration politics. European institutions are not out of this story. They are inside it.
When the right becomes real
A movement can win in court and lose in the registry. It can secure a judgment and still lose an office, an account, a clinic, or a safe meeting place. This is what victory on paper teaches us. Rights do not become real at the moment of judgment. They become real when people can use them safely and repeatedly in common places where life is organized.
🌈 No. 49 in a loop series on Gendering Democracy
this Article Originally published loop and republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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