Nigerian police arrest more than 200 people at gay wedding
Nigerian police on Monday arrested more than 200 people at a gay wedding in the country’s Delta state. CNN and other media outlets reported officers made the arrests in Ekpan, a town that is roughly 250 miles south-southeast of Lagos, the country’s commercial capital and largest city, after they stormed the hotel where the wedding was taking place.
The Associated Press reported a police spokesperson said 67 of those who were arrested remain in custody. Authorities “paraded” them in front of journalists who were at a police station. “The amazing part of it was that we saw two suspects, and there is a video recording where they were performing their wedding ceremony,” said the police spokesperson, according to the AP. “We are in Africa and we are in Nigeria.
We cannot copy the Western world because we don’t have the same culture.” Nigeria is among the countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in areas of the country that are under Sharia law. Then-President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 signed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act that, among other things, punishes those who enter into a same-sex marriage with up to 14 years in prison and bans membership in an LGBT advocacy group.
