Nollywood and its Reluctance with Accepting Queerness

This may sound laughable to cinephiles in Western Europe, but the first time I stumbled on a ‘queer’ character in a Nigerian movie was in a low-budget drama film released in 2001, featuring Nollywood veteran Tony Umez. His character was in a financial mess and had to sleep with an older rich man. True, predatory behaviour should never be conflated with sexuality, but for a 10-year-old boy raised on conservation Christian doctrine, there wasn’t much else to lean on ideologically.  If it’s anything worth noting, I don’t even remember the name of the film. That’s how unremarkable it was.

Nine years later, Moses Ebere’s straight-to-video drama film Men in Love (2010) was released. Starring the late Nigerian actor Muna Obiekwe and Ghana’s John Dumelo, it tells the story of two men, Alex and Charles, who forge a friendship from high school, become business associates, and ultimately find that they are in love with each other. The film was problematic, in that Charles only finds out that he is ‘in love’ after being drugged and sexually assaulted by Alex. The lead actors were quick to distance themselves from the film afterwards, but at least it was one of the more popular films with a gay character in a lead role, and it was controversial enough to attract news headlines when it hit rental stores.

Nigeria, home to over 200 million people, is a country that, for all its strides in culture, art and technology, is still largely homophobic. In 2014, then-President Goodluck Jonathan assented to a bill prohibiting same-sex marriage: an imprisonment term of 14 years is the penalty for the ones who dare. Social media is replete with instances of young queer Nigerians who have been cyberbullied, ostracised and physically assaulted because they had the nerve to be themselves.

For queer Nigerians, art has functioned as a tool of resistance. This is evidenced by the literature and music that has been exported in recent years. Writers like Jude Dibia, Arinze Ifeakandu, Ayodele Olofintuade, Akwaeke Emezi, Unoma Azuah and Chike Frankie Edozien, among others, have expressed defiance in their prose and poetry, flipping the bird as it were to Nigeria’s stance against their existence. Temmie Ovwasa, formerly signed to popular Nigerian record label YBNL, boldly expresses their queerness in their music. A subset of modern Nigerian fashion reflects the influence of queer culture, with said influence finding expression even in the outfits of mainstream Nigerian music artistes.

That bravery, however, has been absent in Nigerian cinema for a long time. It’s sad, but it’s (almost) understandable. Nigeria claims to be a secular state, but from an ideological perspective, many of its citizens are rigid in their religious leanings. Nollywood filmmakers are scared to take on queer stories, for fear of ostracism.

A small ray of light has (or appears  to have) emerged from beneath the cracks of a film industry set in its ways, at least as far as representation is concerned. Certain filmmakers have attempted to go against the grain and tell these stories at varying degrees of nuance and delivery. In 2016, Oluseyi Amuwa’s Asurf Films, in collaboration with Nigerian NGO The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERS) released the short fictional drama Hell or High Water, available on YouTube. Based on the story of a clergyman who struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, it starred Enyinna Nwigwe, Daniel K. Daniel and Ashionye Raccah.

In 2018, Francis Sule, Temidayo Akinboro, Osas Ighodaro and Funlola Aofiyebi starred in Tope Oshin’s slow-paced high school film We Don’t Live Here Anymore, which focuses on two teenage boys who have to deal with discrimination when they are outed to their peers. In 2019, Aoife O’Kelly’s feature drama Walking with Shadows (based on Jude Dibia’s 2006 novel of the same name), which focused on the story of a man facing blackmail and extortion from his former male lover, was released amidst nearly non-existent publicity, though it’s available on the JustWatch streaming service.

This year, Berlinale screened several films in its Panorama section, one of which was the fast-paced and emotive queer drama All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White, the directorial debut by Nigerian filmmaker Babatunde Apalowo, starring Tope Tedela, Riyo David and Martha Ehinome Orhiere. Set in urban Lagos, it tells the story of Bambino, a delivery man who runs into Bawa, a male photographer, at a betting parlour. Sparks fly, but Bambino knows the kind of country he lives in and he has to navigate a muted romance while at the same time struggling to fully accept his sexuality.

From a pedestrian perspective, one could flippantly assert that queer representation in Nigerian cinema is undergoing a progressive turn of sorts. The grim reality, however, is that Nigerian filmmakers are yet to even scratch the surface.

The few queer films that have trickled out from studios over the years have either been independently produced, co-produced with civil rights groups, or sponsored by international brands. Hell or High Water and We Don’t Live Here Anymore were sponsored by TIERS, and All the Colours of the World got picked by Coccinelle Sales before its Berlinale Premiere. The fact that Nollywood’s major film distribution companies would not touch these films with an eight-foot pole, either directly or via their subsidiaries, makes for interesting observation.

Away from studio backing, it’s also important to interrogate the issue of representation on an individual scale. Do queer Nigerians see themselves in these movies? Can they connect with the characters they see on the big screens (whenever these films are lucky to get a premiere) or on their laptops? In an interview with Nigerian media publication Open Country Magazine, Wapah Ezeigwe, director of the short romantic drama Country Love, which was selected at the 2022 Out On Film: Atlanta’s LGBTQ Film Festival, revealed that in making their film, some of the actors that they approached suggested rewrites of the intimate scenes. There’s also the matter of how many queer actors are even out there, but in a country where any sort of unconventional expression leads to raised eyebrows, coming out would be akin to dancing in a furnace. This is, of course, not to suggest that heterosexuals cannot play gay characters, but minorities need to feel like they have a voice too.

All the Colours of the World tries to break away from stereotypes surrounding queer characters in Nigerian cinema, in that it emphasises on the tenderness that defines the relationship between the two main characters. It has a pulse and its plot has a strong core. But the film still falls short on certain counts. It still paints homosexuality as an ‘unnatural feeling’ that has to be battled with. It could be argued that given the uber-religious nature of Nigeria, it’s not out of place for queer people to feel like they have a ‘demon’ that they need to be delivered from, but should we still be running with tropes like this? Did Bawa have to weaponise the country’s homophobia to get back at Bambino because he felt scorned?

Also, the movie almost falls into the trap of centring the platonic relationship between Bambino and Ifeyinwa (Orhiere), a female neighbour who has a crush on him. There is just as much (if not more) tension and chemistry, when compared to what obtains between both male characters. Again, why does a woman always have to exist in the dynamic as some sort of emotional foil? It’s true that there are closeted gay men in Nigeria who get into heterosexual marriages as a smokescreen, but a little shift from the norm wouldn’t hurt.

In the middle of a conversation a few months ago, a well-travelled acquaintance described Netflix’s attempts at queer inclusion as “the West’s attempts to shove gayness down our throats”. Raising questions as to the target audience of queer Nigerian films may be harsh and tone-deaf, but you just sense that a hostile reception awaits any major Nigerian studio that chooses to pick up one of these films.

I want to walk into a cinema in Lagos with the knowledge that a queer local film can be screened, even if I have to admit that right now, that’s a lot to ask. But maybe I am being nitpicky. Maybe seeing queer characters gain some screen time is good enough for now, despite the real-life orientation of who’s playing them. Maybe queer films should be made not just for queer Nigerians but for everyone, so they can see that these stories exist and that their realities are valid too.