When a gang of men ambushed Rashidi Williams and a male friend earlier this year, the 25-year-old gay Nigerian was too afraid to report the attack to police or even to his family.

Doing so would only create more problems, he says, in this country where legislators are now seeking to criminalize gay marriage.

Here in the megacity of Africa’s most populous nation, Williams says marriage though is the last thing on the minds of many gay and lesbian Nigerians who fear physical danger in this conservative country.

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Nigeria is moving forward with a bill that will further ban same-sex marriage, and threaten free speech in that nation, and this has many rights groups afraid that this will do more damage to the LGBT community in that nation. The bill will, without directly banning LGBT groups, make them largely illegal.

Homosexuality is already illegal in Nigeria under laws dating back to British colonial rule, and is punishable by 14-years in prison. This bill will likely pass because it has the support of many high-ranking officials.

The bill is being pushed because it is likely to strengthen the approval of the current government. Most Nigerians strongly disapprove of homosexuality, and many see it as an import from outside their culture, and that it is at odds with their religious beliefs. People have been killed just on the rumors that someone is gay.

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The overriding determination of most Nigerian senators to ensure that the malaise of same-sex marriage otherwise called gay marriage does not take any root in the Nigerian society, propelled the overwhelming support which the bill proposed to prohibit the practice, scaled through the second reading yesterday at the Senate. From indications, the days of the practice appear numbered, given the massive support it received.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Domingo Obende (PDP, Edo) and 13 others would have been shot down by Senator Ita Enang (PDP, Akwa Ibom) who argued that the criminal code had already criminalised gay marriage but for the intervention of Senate President David Mark who allowed the bill to proceed.

Mark’s position was that the bill should be allowed to go through the second reading and people who have objections against it could table it at that stage.

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