Guilty Until Proven Innocent: A Gay Refugee’s Confrontation With America
nytimes.comASYLUM A Memoir & Manifesto By Edafe Okporo Many around the world were bewildered by the American actor Jussie Smollett’s rambling testimony during his 2021 trial for a hoax hate crime he staged in 2019, when he asked two Nigerian brothers, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, to attack and yell racist and homophobic slurs at him on the streets of Chicago.
Some Nigerians wondered: By including in his testimony the irrelevant detail of having “made out” with Abimbola — the star witness who testified against him — was Smollett exacting revenge on a man from a country where homosexuality is punishable by not just social alienation, but jail?
In his insightful memoir, “Asylum,” the Nigerian refugee and activist Edafe Okporo paints a disturbing picture of exactly how dangerous being gay in Nigeria can be. “Open the door!
We know you are gay, and we are going to kill you!” are the words that startle him awake one morning in 2016. His neighbors in the capital city of Abuja then break down his door and drag him outside, “beating me unconscious while children sang and cheered and clapped behind us.
