ReDICo: The Podcast for Digital Interculturality Cover

ReDICo: The Podcast for Digital Interculturality

The ReDICo Research Co-operative
Since 11/2024 3 episodes

Series 1 - Episode 3 "Online community-building among the Nigerian LGBTQI+ community"

"Series 1: Freedom and the Internet"

2024-11-11 38 min

Description & Show Notes

In the third episode of the "ReDICo Podcast”, Anna Finzel and activist Bisi Alimi discuss the challenging situation of the LGBTQI+ community in Nigeria, where same-sex relationships are still criminalized.

LGBTQI+ activist Bisi Alimi shares insights on the legal landscape, his personal experiences, and the critical role online communities play for marginalized individuals. Alimi emphasizes the importance of self-acceptance, fighting for LGBTQI+ rights, and supporting cross-border activism. He explains how social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook have become safe spaces for the LGBTQI+ community in Nigeria, despite ongoing risks and challenges. Alimi also reflects on his public coming-out and his return to Nigeria, highlighting the significance of solidarity and the ongoing struggle for freedom, a fight that must be earned through perseverance.


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Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome to REDICO, the podcast for digital interculturality. REDICO is a researcher networking project, and the abbreviation stands for Researching Digital Interculturality Cooperatively. So in this project, what we're interested in is questions on intercultural communication and also how these issues can be brought together with the area of internet studies. My name is Anna Finzel. I'm based at the University of Potsdam, and my research has been concerned with what language tells us about the way people understand gender and homosexuality. Currently, I'm investigating the role of digital media for social cohesion in diaspora communities. So in the previous podcast episode, Luisa Conti and Roman Lietz have talked about questions of identity and culture. And in this episode, we're going to address the role of online community building for people who cannot freely build communities in the non-virtual world, because, well, there can be several reasons, but especially because they face discrimination and also oppression. And with this focus, this episode also links up with other activities during the science year 2024 in Germany, and this year stands on the motto of freedom. So in particular today, we'll look at the Nigerian LGBTQI community in this episode. For our listeners, just a notice in advance, the interview was recorded in an online video call and there was a bit of an unstable internet connection. So towards the end of the interview, there were a couple of glitches, but the podcast studio did a really good job in editing everything, so I hope that still what was being said towards the end of the interview still becomes clear. So for this, I'm joined by Bisi Alimi, and I cannot emphasize enough how thrilled I am to have him as a guest. So Bisi is not only a trained actor who appeared on Nigerian television, and that in itself would be exciting enough, but he's also a world famous Nigerian British LGBTQI activist. He is founder of the Bisi Alimi Foundation and also other initiatives to promote human rights, and he's also an inspirational speaker and a very captivating person. So a very warm welcome to you, Bisi, and thank you very much for being here.
SPEAKER 2
00:02:30
Thank you, Anna, for having me. It's a pleasure.
SPEAKER 1
00:02:32
Even today, many members of the worldwide LGBTQI community cannot live their identity freely, and that is why they have to seek other ways of connecting with peers. So in Nigeria, there is a century-old colonial law that still has impact on people's life, and this law is enshrined in the Nigerian Criminal Code and also the Penal Code, and it forbids acts, and I quote here, against the order of nature. And this also includes homosexual activity or same-sex sexual activity. The situation has even worsened since 2013. This was the year when the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act was passed, and this act basically made anyone in knowledge of same-sex sexual activity between two people legally liable. So Bisi, let's first keep talking about the legal situation in Nigeria for a moment, because I think that's very important for people who don't know about this. So what exactly does the criminalization of same-sex sexual activity and also the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act mean for people in Nigeria? So how does this affect people's lives? Okay.
SPEAKER 2
00:03:41
So to actually understand the legal framework in Nigeria, we need to, you know, based on your introduction, actually look at the pre-colonial, and then the general colonial, and then the post-colonial. But I think not to focus so much on, you know, the past. In the pre-colonial, there was really no documented rules and regulations or criminalization of queer people. There's none of that on record. Actually, what was on record was the recognition in certain spaces of queer relationships that were inexistent. And these were documented by the white archaeologists who, in their own words, considered these behaviors as being primitive. And then we talk about the colonial period. And that was when, you know, we were under the Victorian era, and there we have the Victorian Moral Law, which is a burglary law, or the, you know, the sex against the order of nature, which is rooted in our penal code. And it's still in our penal code to today from Section 216 to Section 219. You'll find that there that talks about, you know, sex, explicitly talk about anal sex. And then we have the post-colonial, which you also alluded to, which was in 2013, but signed into law in 2014, Act of Parliament, or since then, the Marie Prohibition Act. However, beyond those legal, I call them the secular legal framework, there are also religious legal framework in place in the northern part of Nigeria, in some parts of northern parts of Nigeria, because this is another illusion from people that do not understand the composition of Nigeria. And they always assume that the northern part of Nigeria is Muslim. There are places in northern part of Nigeria that are actually Christians. But in the Islamic northern part of Nigeria, then you have the Sharia law, which again goes far and beyond the secular constitutional rules. So you talk about stoning to death, you talk about all of those extreme punishment that comes with it. But when you talk about the secular law, then you talk about the same as the Marie Prohibition Act, which talked about setting up of clubs and association, which earns you 10 years imprisonment or a fine. Same-sex marriage, which earns you 10 years imprisonment or a fine. If you attend a same-sex marriage, then you get five years imprisonment. And then if you know somebody who is gay, you're expected to report. If you don't, then it's turned on the ageing and abetting rules, then you get punished for it. And many, many, many more like that. So we look at now the religious structure, the secular structure, then there is the societal structure that is predominantly driven, again, by religion. And this is where Christianity comes into it. And this is mostly perpetuated by non-state actors. So when I talk about non-state actors, I'm talking about non-governmental institutions, so like the police or the paramilitary or the right. So I'm talking about your neighbours, your father, your mother, your uncle. This is where the non-state actors take laws into their own hands and punish somebody in whatever measure from, you know, trigger warning to anyone that is watching, from the extreme of killing to the extreme of homelessness, to the, you know, to the bottom of homelessness. These are the kind of punishment that are meted out to people who are known or considered to be queer.
SPEAKER 1
00:07:39
Hmm. Yeah. So it's actually like this is not only a problem of the law, but it's in people's heads, right? It's what people, what kind of patterns of thought people have in their minds.
SPEAKER 2
00:07:52
Yeah, exactly. And the issue is that people always start and stop with the law. But what people don't understand is the technicality of the law. It's kind of too complex for the law to take its place, right? So what is more dangerous for queer people in Nigeria, and ask any queer person, they will tell you what is more dangerous and more life-threatening for queer people in Nigeria is the non-state actor, the social act that comes because there are no rules. We don't have any anti-, we don't have any hate crime laws in Nigeria. So when you, as a straight person or as someone, it doesn't matter even because it happens between two gay people as well. When somebody commits an act of homophobia, there is no rules or laws to protect the victim. So there isn't justification for the act. And because there is a justification for homophobia, it is in a way legalized and people think they need to do it because our pastors, our imams are telling us to do it.
SPEAKER 1
00:08:57
So talking about how people think about homosexuality, let's go back a step. What was your childhood like? When did you realize you were gay, for example, was that from the beginning and how did people react?
SPEAKER 2
00:09:13
Yeah, so my realization of my sexuality, and I'm quoting in that because I'm being very careful not to use the word because at the time I was coming to the realization of it, I had no understanding of what that word means. So I don't want to miseducate people that might be listening to say, oh my God, in the 80s, you know what homosexuality is in Nigeria. No, I didn't know. But I knew something was off with me in relation to my brother. And as a little boy, I always want to play dress up. I always want to, I was quite a feminine and that was my initial introduction to all of this. But I knew something was off when I was around about eight, nine years old. So it was that quite early for me to know, because I think it was easier because I grew up in a masculine, macho, patriarchy society. So if you don't conform, you will quickly know, or when you're struggling to conform, you will quickly know why you're struggling to conform compared to if you don't live in a society like that. And there is no expectation on gender or gender binary that exists. I grew up in an extremely binary society. And so it was quite early for me to know that, okay, this was going on. And my childhood, again, was also a contributing factor because I grew up in a very religious home. And so learning about the Bible and the Quran and all of that quickly bring to my consciousness that what I might be doing could be evil. And so that becomes something that I needed to deal with and I needed to deal with it as soon as I could deal with it. And so that gave me a very traumatic and very challenging childhood in a way. And also the fact that my parents were quite clear in their judgments when they realized my sexuality in a way, they were quite quick with their judgments and the rejection of it. And because I didn't have any role models, I didn't have anybody to look up to. So trying to reconcile what I was going through was quite difficult for my young mind.
SPEAKER 1
00:11:43
You already worked in a couple of projects that supported the Nigerian LGBTQI community during, let's say, the late 1990s and the early noughties. And you were also still living in Nigeria then. So we have to keep in mind that social media at that point in time, they were not ubiquitous, right? So they were not everywhere. So you could not easily connect with people online. So how did community building work before social media? How did you organize all these events? How did you organize actions?
SPEAKER 2
00:12:23
Yeah, that's a very good question, actually, because, I mean, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter, there was no TikTok. I mean, you have that kind of conversation with children of this day. They don't get it. There was no mobile phone. And it was very interesting because to have a landline, you have to be very rich for you to be able to pay for a landline. So a lot of us, I grew up in a very poor family, a lot of us don't have access to that kind of luxury. But you know, if you want to get something, you know how to get it, no matter how difficult it might be for you to be able to get that thing. I think I can share my experience after watching Pose on TV. I don't know whether you know Pose, which is this American story about, you know, the Black community, the Black queer community in New York, powerful, powerful series. It was on Netflix for some time now. After watching Pose, I had this quick realization that, oh, this is my story. This is how I grew up. And it just gave me that, you know, that connection beyond borders about the experience of queer people in a very difficult situation. So we have something that is very close to like houses. So we have like, you know, pockets of houses and each house has a leader, like a mother kind of thing we call them. And then you meet a friend who knows someone and then they kind of introduce, they bring you into these houses. And these heads of these houses, they have the network of how they get information across. So when there's a party, they're mostly the ones organizing the party or their children is celebrating birthday and they are organizing the birthday for their children and they invite other houses. And so, and that's how information was going, was going around. We had to build HIV intervention and civil rights queer movements in Nigeria on that system. So we had to quickly make sure that the mothers of the house were aware of when we are doing, you know, sexualized intervention and be able to encourage and galvanize people to attend it. And I'm going to tell you this. It sounds easier than I'm making it because it was, it was very easy compared to now in the age of social media and short attention span, the level of commitment was quite high. Yeah.
SPEAKER 1
00:15:03
I can well imagine like people who have seen the film, Paris is Burning, right? Exactly. I'm just, you know, given an example so that people who are familiar with this film might might know what you're talking about. So I'm guessing this is similar in Nigeria. So that's quite interesting that you say like sort of community building was easier or was more personal, if I can summarize that this way. In 2004, something that was really, really unthought of before happened. So you were the first person actually to come out on Nigerian television. So I think not everybody is aware of why this is an extraordinary thing to do. Maybe you can enlighten people there. Why is this extraordinary?
SPEAKER 2
00:15:48
So I think it's very interesting because when you started the introduction, you talked about me being an actor. So I went to university to study theatre arts and I was on TV. I was acting. I was living the best of my life. I was living every actor's dream, being recognized, being, you know, having to walk down the street and knowing people can see your face, people can recognize you and all of that for your work really. But that didn't stop there. There was also the other side of it, which was the media frenzy around my sexuality. And I think this just doesn't happen in the moment. There's a long story back you can trace to when I was in university and I was outed by a school magazine and that picked up up until that moment. And I think personally for me, I was just tired of running and hiding and pretending to be something that I wasn't. I was tired of wanting to be straight because all my life I've acted straight and acting straight was becoming very boring, was becoming very rudimental, was not very attractive. There was nothing sexy about being straight. And I think for me, more importantly, there was nothing about being honest to myself about being straight. And I remembered when I discussed the initial thought of my coming out with the production team that I was working on on TV at that time, they were like, oh, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. You can't do that. But I just felt like if I don't do something, this rumour is never going to stop. And what is going to happen is I'm going to spend the rest of my life playing catch up and trying to just, you know, get rid of it. And they're just going to be one step or two steps ahead of me. I don't want to live my life like that. And I was quite young. I was just 29. So I decided to reach out to the most watched TV show in Nigeria. And I said I wanted to come out. You know, everybody's still asking me, was I crazy? And I said, well, you know what, I've got to do what I've got to do. But I reached out to them and I said I wanted to come out. And for them, they also struggled because one is that we've never, like you said, we've never had this kind of thing on TV before. So we don't know what the reaction would be. We don't know how to even handle it. But we did anyway. And next month is going to make it 20 years that that that happened. And and, you know, here I am now.
SPEAKER 1
00:18:38
Yeah. Happy anniversary. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So like the events that followed that followed your coming out there. So I gather that life for you was was was not an easy one after that. And then eventually you also had to leave Nigeria for the UK, right? So when did you when did you settle in the UK? When did you have to leave Nigeria? Yeah.
SPEAKER 2
00:19:09
Life wasn't wasn't really it was not easy at all. It was very, very tough. It was very tough. So I left Nigeria in 2007 after there was a there was an attempted attack on my life. And and I felt at that point that it was very important for me to leave. But it was also the conversation was also initiated by my parents who felt that out of I think out of two things, out of love and out of shame, love that, OK, they can't deny the fact that they love me, but they can't deny the fact that they are ashamed of me. They are ashamed of what I was becoming. I was becoming a ridicule to them. I was now this gay guy that everybody knows, that everybody talks about. Their friends would call them, neighbours would talk and all of this was going on. And they couldn't, they didn't know how to handle it or how to deal with it. So when the attack happened, I remembered my father having a conversation with me after I just got out of the police station. And he was like, do you still have a visa on your passport? I said yes. And he said, you need to get out of the country. And this was on the 11th of April, 2007. And no, it was the 10th, it was the 10th of April, 2007. And that night I got a ticket to leave Nigeria, to leave on the 11th. I left Nigeria on the 11th of April and I was in the UK on the 12th of April. It was that quick. It wasn't as if I sat in a corner, I thought about what am I going to do? How am I going to fly? Oh, I'm going to fly British Airways first class or Virgin Atlantic, anything. There was nothing planned that way. And for me, it's very important, especially when we talk about refugees and the impact, what makes somebody flee? How much freedom somebody has to give up to relocate. And sometimes people don't get it and they just see you as the other and feel like they needed to protect their space. And I'm not denying the fact that you want to protect your race, you want to protect your ethnicity, you want to protect whatever you want to protect. But sometimes what people fail to understand or the discussion people fail to take forward, is the reality that I am here because as a result of the atrocities your forefathers committed in your name before you were even born, to me even before I was even born. And if reality has to bring us back for a process of reconciliation, embrace that opportunity to reconcile with me being the result of your wealth at this moment. And I think that, and I'm going to be very, very honest. I think this is something that white people don't like to confront. This is one reality. I don't think they're ashamed to confront it so much so that they are afraid to confront and have an honest conversation about it. Sorry, I went on the time.
SPEAKER 1
00:22:30
No, no. Maybe also afraid to confront their privileges, right? Yeah. If you see your privileges in danger. Yeah.
SPEAKER 2
00:22:39
Again, that's the point because when we mention privilege, especially, I mean, I live in the UK and the moment you mentioned privilege, people panic. People think that it's something that they don't deserve. You deserve it. You did not make yourself white, right? You did not. It's not as if we went to the supermarket to choose our race and I say, you know what, black people are cute. So I want to be black with all the suffering that comes with it, right? Or you go to the supermarket and say, you know what, I'm going to be white because it has a lot of privilege. We are who we are because we're here. And I think that the best that we can do is to realize that certain features in our body puts us at an advantage over another person. And when we talk about privilege, right? You are, I'm talking to you now, you're a white woman. I am a black man, right? Even in Europe, right, where it's predominantly a white society, I have certain privileges that you cannot have. The privilege to walk out, to walk about in the night in certain places that a lot of women cannot walk out. So you can't go in certain areas where I can go because I'm a man. It doesn't excuse I wouldn't get attacked because I am black. And it doesn't excuse that you could get protected because you're white. But we need to realize that certain features in our body, in our existence, in our presence, protect us from certain ends in society. And we need to recognize that and try to confront and challenge why those things are so, instead of trying to run away from it.
SPEAKER 1
00:24:14
Yeah. Speaking about running away from it, so you said in an interview that you became actually very depressed during the first time in the UK. Out of the reasons that you mentioned already, and also because you felt that you couldn't support activism in Nigeria the way that you wanted to, because you were in the UK, you're not in Nigeria anymore. But then you realized that you can still contribute to what's going on in Nigeria, and that also activism is not a question of borders or geography. And if I may quote you there, you said, we live in a global world now, you can still have the same impact. I quite like that. So how can this impact be achieved? How can I network? How can I organize events? How can I, in general, be an activist when I'm not in the same place as the people that I want to mobilize? How does that work?
SPEAKER 2
00:25:09
It's very easy. You know, the advent of social media has made everything very, very interesting. For example, I...
SPEAKER 1
00:25:18
Maybe for our younger listeners. So that was the time when social media and smartphones entered the stage, right? So your first years in the UK. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER 2
00:25:30
So at the time, yeah, that was 2000, I think that was 2007, and 2007, 2008, 2009. So by that time, we have access to social media, Facebook was quite a big thing. Instagram was still trying to find its way in the scheme, but there was no TikTok there. So if you are listening and you are a Gen Z, there was no TikTok at that time. And also, Twitter was also a big thing. And I think for me, it was a very quick thing in my mind. By accident to an extent, but by also by trying to connect with people that, you know, Facebook was first of all, a thing. And then we will go online, we will share information, we share, you know, we share intelligence about what is happening, about where this is happening. And also don't forget that because I came to the UK and I claimed asylum, I couldn't go back to Nigeria for like six years. So a lot of the things that I was aware of were things that were shared with me online and all the information that people were sharing with me. And it was very interesting because then I was now using social media without going live or making a post or sharing my opinion of what was going on in Nigeria. And I was also writing a lot of articles. So most of these articles were making their way back to the media in Nigeria. And I, you know, with the support or with the privilege of CNN, CBS, BBC, I was doing a lot of TV interviews. I was always on TV. And that means that then some of these things get back to Nigeria. So there was all of these that helped me to reconnect and look at the possibility that I don't have to be on the ground in Nigeria for me to have an impact. And that helped in my mental health and in my healing.
SPEAKER 1
00:27:36
Of course it did. Yeah, I can well imagine. Let's get maybe a bit more specific and also a bit more general at the same time. Is there, so what kind of online platforms and communities are there for queer people in Nigeria? So how do people in Nigeria connect via digital media or social media? Oh, there's several ways.
SPEAKER 2
00:27:59
So there's WhatsApp, which is still one of the biggest platforms where we connect. For example, those of us in the diaspora in the UK, we have a group called African Queer Food Dines. And this is a group where we created and we have dinners and we talk about, you know, issues and we find a way to support the movement on the ground in Nigeria. Because now we have now become a little bit affluent. We have jobs in Europe and especially in the UK, we're making money. And so we have disposable income to an extent. And it's about how do we galvanize this disposable income to support the movement on the ground in Nigeria. And then you have Instagram, which is also another way where we share information, Facebook. But I think top on that list would possibly be WhatsApp and TikTok. And TikTok, if you go on TikTok now and you type queer Nigeria, you will see archives of stories, of content, of people sharing things and being very proactive and being very vocal and being very queer as well about their reality in Nigeria. And another space is also Twitter, which I refuse to call X, for example.
SPEAKER 1
00:29:23
Yeah. So what would you say, like, in what way does online community building, which is a great possibility for people to connect, in what way does it shape people's identity?
SPEAKER 2
00:29:37
I mean, it does because, one, you can be online privately. So a lot of this platform allows you to just to block your profile and allow people who can see you to see you. And what I have seen is more and more people who are, especially we can talk about the trans community in Nigeria, where it's such a very nonsense discourse because we don't, Nigeria doesn't still understand the concept of transness. So a lot of trans women, we still present as men for them to have access to job or to do, to have access to whatever they want to have access to. But when they're at home in their own, in their private room, they, OK, I think I'm lost. It was even more challenging for trans people, especially trans women, who can't get employment, who can't have access to health care and who can't even be visible on the street. And the only place that they can be very visible is actually online, where they can be their authentic self, where they can also be part of the community and express themselves very well. So this visibility, though, is still within the community, but for me, I think that is most powerful because it's within the space where they feel safe. And sometimes people take this beyond that community and they make their visibility open to everyone who cares to know who they are. And the number is increasing, massively so. The number is increasing and it brings a lot of joy to my heart.
SPEAKER 1
00:31:16
So would you then say that these online communities are sort of safe spaces? Yes, they're very safe.
SPEAKER 2
00:31:22
They're very, very safe. Because like I said, you have to be, you have to be one to exist in that space and be really, really well protected. Yeah.
SPEAKER 1
00:31:32
So here I'm thinking about the study that you did. It was entitled, Not Dancing to Their Music, the Effects of Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia on the Lives of LGBTQ People in Nigeria. So in this study, you found out that 40, sorry, 54% of participants, that is more than half of participants, had experienced threats and harassment online. So I'm guessing that these safe spaces, these online safe spaces, there are also space to withdraw from the safe or the spaces in the online world that are not safe, right?
SPEAKER 2
00:32:11
Yeah, because that study was talking about the general social media space, right? So it was talking about, you know, me just being generally on Facebook or me being generally on Instagram. I mean, I can use myself as an example. I get attacked on social media like every day. Like it's a daily, if it doesn't happen, I can't, why are they not attacking me today? Have I done something that is making them, no, not to attack me today, yeah, so there is that. But then these spaces, this is a place where people then withdraw into, share their experience and find support and find income, oh, it's okay. But sometimes what happens is they come back, these people come back to this online and you see this group, massive group of queer people going to that space where this person will viciously go after everyone. So yeah, it's a safe space for us to come back to, but it's also a place for us to regroup and to support one another. But there also is a space where you go to detox from the toxicity that is on the main social media platforms.
SPEAKER 1
00:33:40
Maybe as the last but one question, how do you think freedom can be achieved for the Nigerian LGBTQI community?
SPEAKER 2
00:33:49
You know, I've always been saying this and I know some people don't agree with me. What I don't think that freedom is given. I think freedom is earned and freedom, the person that is denying you of your freedom is doing so because they know that the less powerful you are, the more powerful they are. And until you fight and run for your freedom, that person will not have any freedom. So we have to make power that they hold less attractive for them to recognise us as human beings. So we have to fight for it. And I think that one of the biggest fear of people that want freedom is the repercussion of freedom. Freedom doesn't come easy. People need to know that if you want to have, enjoy and let freedom prosper, you have to pay the price for it.
SPEAKER 1
00:34:48
OK, so as a last question, I think it was only in 2015, right, that you came back to Nigeria for the first time. What was your welcome like? It was really nice.
SPEAKER 2
00:35:02
It was very nice, actually, after about seven years to be back. And I remembered when I when I landed at the airport, I was really, really nervous because I didn't know what the what the reaction would be. I remember that I was invited to be part of a book festival, my agent was completely against it. And my agent was like, it's too dangerous. So we had to tell the people that invited me, yeah, they have to provide the security, they have to provide the security. And they did everything. And I got to the airport and the immigration was, oh, my God, BCLN, oh, my God, BCLN. And I was like, excuse me, what is going on? You're not supposed to you're supposed to make me afraid of of being here. But it wasn't like that. So the welcome was really nice. And I remember that night.
SPEAKER 1
00:36:11
I was hungry.
SPEAKER 2
00:36:12
So I was with my friends and I was hungry and I told my friends I wanted to go out. They didn't want me to go out. I said, I've not been in Nigeria for like a long time. I want to go out. I want to know what is happening. And we went to a restaurant and we're at that restaurant, we were eating and having a laugh and all of that. And then suddenly one of them said, oh, my God, oh, my God, we need to leave. We need to leave now. And I said, what is happening? He said, no, we need to leave now. We need to pay. And we need to leave. And I said, why should we leave? And he showed me his phone and on his phone is a news article, BC Alim is spotted in this restaurant in Nigeria. Somebody has taken a picture, has gone to their house, they've made a story and they named the restaurant. So we had to pay and we have to run out. And yeah, but that was my experience, oh, my God, we need to go. But it was it was quite nice. And I think that that experience emboldened me. That makes me keep going back to Nigeria, 2015, I've been going back to Nigeria regularly. And I have a T-shirt, I have a T-shirt, I wrote on it, rich, famous and gay. And the idea behind the T-shirt is I am not the boy that ran away from Nigeria. And it goes back to what I said about freedom. For me to be free and to express and enjoy my freedom in Nigeria, I had to be chased out of Nigeria. I have to lose everything, everything about Nigeria that I hold dear. I have to come to another country. I have to discover myself. I have to make a life for myself, for me to be able to go back to Nigeria as a free man and the people that persecuted me, for them to bow at my feet and recognise my humanity. That is what freedom is.
SPEAKER 1
00:38:12
Well, Fisi, I think these are wonderful last words for this interview. So thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and also your experiences with us. So all the best for your work. And I really, really hope that we can stay in contact and that we can stay connected and to see you again. Yeah, we will.
SPEAKER 2
00:38:33
Thank you so much, Anna, for having me for a wonderful evening. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 1
00:38:38
So this is the final podcast in this series of the Ridicule podcast. And our series was inspired by the Science Year 2024 in Germany, which has centred on the topic of freedom. And the Science Year is called on German-based academics to reflect on their work and also how their work relates to the notion of freedom. The Ridicule podcast will return in 2025 with another series that will consist of six podcasts. And in this podcast series, well-known scholars engaging with digital interculturality will discuss their work in a very accessible and understandable manner. So keep tuned for this. And thank you very much for listening.

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