This law is incomplete

While Nigerians are busy hailing it, Europeans and Americans are busy condemning it. This country’s Muslim and Christian leaders, who are normally at each other’s throats, are united this time around in hailing the new law. The new law prescribes a 14-year jail term for anyone engaging in same sex marriage or civil union. It […]

While Nigerians are busy hailing it, Europeans and Americans are busy condemning it. This country’s Muslim and Christian leaders, who are normally at each other’s throats, are united this time around in hailing the new law.
The new law prescribes a 14-year jail term for anyone engaging in same sex marriage or civil union. It provides a 10-year jail term for any person who makes a public show of same-sex amorous relationships. Persons, clubs, societies or organisations who register, aid or abet such unions could also go to jail for 10 years. The law further says a same sex marriage contracted abroad will not be recognized in Nigeria. The Western powers reacted to the new law by saying it discriminates against a Nigerian minority on the basis of sexual orientation and preference and that it infringes on freedoms guaranteed by Nigeria’s Constitution and treaty obligations.
But wait a minute. In so far as the intention of the National Assembly is to curtail deviant sexual behaviour of the dead-end type that does not lead to procreation, then this law as signed by President Jonathan reminds me of what Speaker Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill once said of America’s tax law; that “it is more loophole than law.” I had cause to remind our legislators of this some years ago when Nigerian gays under the umbrella of the Queer Alliance stormed the National Assembly Complex to oppose the passing of this bill.
This law says anyone who walks down a Nigerian street showing signs of amorous same-sex relations could wind up in Kirikiri for 10 years. The question is, what about a man who walks down the street showing signs of amorous relations with a child? I know it is tricky for a policeman to distinguish between parental love and latent paedophilia, but he must try. Many Nigerian paedophiles operate out of homes, offices, clubs and business centres from where they prey on children through internet social sites. This law didn’t mention them.
Not only gays march on our streets. Many people walk down Nigerian streets tightly embracing chicken, cats and dogs or massaging horses, donkeys and cows. How do we know that some of them are not zoophiliacs, men and women who have sexual relations with animals? This law didn’t mention zoophilia, otherwise called bestiality. Neither did it outlaw fetishism, having sexual relations with non-living objects such as dolls, statues, plastic and wooden objects. We should plug that loophole.
Many a times you see a Nigerian man or woman severely beating a child or another adult on the street. This could easily be a case of sadism, deriving sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others. There are also people in Nigeria who could be masochists, men and women who derive sexual pleasure from being beaten, flogged or kicked. Some Nigerian wives pick up unnecessary quarrels with their husbands and invite a smack; these could be cases of masochism which the police should investigate.
Malcolm X told a story in his autography of how he worked for a Madam in Harlem during World War Two. She was a supplier for sadism and masochism. A rich customer will pay a lot of money and ask to be whipped mercilessly. Malcolm X will stand by the street corner to receive him, then take him to a hide out where he will be whipped by a big black woman while he cried and wriggled on the floor. There must be some rich masochists in Nigeria.  
Our new law also forgot to provide stiff jail terms for voyeurism, sexual interest in spying on people engaged in intimate behaviours such as undressing or bathing. Some years ago a man was caught at a compound in Nyanya peeping through the keyhole at a married woman taking her bath. Now, there are also apodysophiliacs in Nigeria, people who walk our streets engaging in sexual exhibitionism such as flashing. Authorities of all higher institutions in Nigeria have for many years battled against what they euphemistically call indecent dressing by students. How come this law forgot it? Before commercial motorcycles were banished from the Abuja city centre, a lot of young women cut their trousers so low as to expose many things. How many years in jail should they get?  
This law also overlooked Nigerian frotteurism, the non-consensual rubbing against another person to achieve sexual arousal. There are many frotteurists who go to Nigerian markets, lecture halls, football stadia or they enter crowded buses and taxis with the intent of rubbing against other people in order to achieve sexual arousal. We used to read in American novels about groping, men who grabbed a young woman’s bosom or behind as she walked in the streets.
This Same Sex Marriage [Prohibition] Law also forgot about the large army of Nigerian telephone scatalogists, people who make obscene phone calls, text messages or send obscene pictures and videos to other people. Most of the internet social sites have been adapted for this purpose, especially after midnight, when Nigeria’s mobile phone operators give away free airtime. How many years in jail should anyone get for scattalogia?
We also demand a mention in the law for gerentophilia, young men who want to mate with very old women or young women who want to mate with very old men. They deserve their own ward at Kirikiri. There should be a section in the law for hybristophiliacs, those who are sexually attracted to people who committed a gruesome crime. Some Nigerian women sent fan mail to the notorious highway robber Lawrence Anini when he was in Benin prison. If he had come out, some of them would have marched down the streets with him in an amorous tangle.  
Now, how many years in jail should a Nigerian get for dendrophilia, to be sexually aroused by a tree? All the people that we often see scrambling up palm trees as well as those that take a nap on a neem, iroko, obeche or acacia trees, the police ought to search them for suspected dendrophilia. Some years’ jail time must also be provided for teratophiliacs, those who are sexually attracted to monstrous people. There are many madwomen on Nigerian streets that are carrying pregnancies or nursing children. These are unlikely cases of Immaculate Conception, so teratophiliacs must be at work.
A Nigerian macrophiliac, a man who prefers sexual relations with giant women, as well as smallish Nigerian women, who march down the street in amorous company of gigantic men, warrant some years’ jail terms. I can forgive this law for not mentioning biastophiliacs because they are mentioned in other Nigerian laws. These are people who derive sexual pleasure by assaulting an unconsenting person. Another name for them is rapists.
This law also forgot Nigerian katoptronophiliacs, people who derive pleasure from mating in front of mirrors. All the rural people who start bush fires in Nigeria allegedly to clear farmlands or to capture game, how are we sure some of them are not pyrophiliacs, people who derive sexual pleasure by starting a fire? We also need some years’ jail time for Nigerian maiesiophiliacs, those who have a crush for pregnant women, together with Nigerian practitioners of erotic lactation, adult men who want to be breastfed with the baby’s milk.
Was it deliberate that the law forgot kleptophiliacs, those who derive sexual pleasure from stealing? A thousand Kirikiris cannot contain Nigerian kleptophiliacs if we round up all of them. What about Nigerian coprophiliacs, people who are sexually stimulated by human faeces? This is a practice whereby the sexual partner defecates on his partner’s chest and they both bath in faeces. Finally, this law at least needs a small provision for necrophilia, which is having sex with a corpse.