 |
| Bisi and his boyfriend |
A gay rights activist, Bisi Alimi, caused a stir on
Wednesday as he mocked Nigeria on the Facebook.
Alimi, the first Nigerian to declare publicly his
support for same sex union, noted that the country “will go down soon unless it
stopped praying to God and started acting”.
He wrote from the United Kingdom where he is on a self-imposed
exile.
Soon after his comment, which many considered
unpatriotic and mocking, was published, hundreds of Nigerians responded on
Facebook, blogs, Twitter and Instagram.
Responding from Abuja, one Chinelo Peters described
the words used by Alimi as derogatory and unpatriotic.
He urged him to re-channel his frustration into a
positive cause that could impact on the country instead of complaining from the
UK.
Peters said on the Facebook, “You are a Nigerian but
in an asylum in the UK. Why do you refer to Nigeria as that country? If you do
not like something and you are passionate about doing it differently, you need
to champion the change you desire.
"Come back home to assist. It is
inappropriate to describe your country with derogatory adjectives.
He also urged Alimi to study the lives of people who
had effected changes in different parts of the world, saying they were
individuals who never cast aspersion on their countries.
Another Facebook user, Allwell Opara, said Alimi
would not have used “abusive” language for his country if he had proper
understanding about the stages the UK facilities he used to assess Nigeria went
through.
According to Opara, patriotic citizens built the UK
not the likes of Alimi.
Opara added, “It is so sad that this is coming from
someone I thought would be more reasonable and sensible on social media. If
Nigeria is cursed, it means every Nigerian, including Alimi, is cursed.
"No
matter how long you live abroad, the blood of a Nigerian flows in your veins.
We love our country while we hope for a change one day.”
Even those who agreed with Alimi condemned his
choice of words, describing it as “offensive and unbecoming of a civilised
individual”.
For instance, a foreigner, Thierry Limpens, said,
“You analysed right but I will not use the same words.”
Besides urging Nigerians “to stop praying and start
acting”, Alimi noted, “Nigeria is not an experiment.”
He had added, “|Some idiots will come here now and
start posting how their God is going to redeem them. Okay, here is the thing:
if there is, indeed, anything like hell fire, it is in Nigeria where all
Nigerians are roasting.
"So, if you want to remind someone that they will go to
hell fire when they die, you might as well link it to your current experience.”
Describing Nigerians as hypocrites, he asked why God
had not intervened in their affairs if he truly existed. According to him, it
is either God does not exist or that he has given up on the country 50 years
ago.
Alimi, a Theatre Arts graduate, also revealed that
power and Internet challenges had frustrated the conduct of an online interview
he scheduled with a Nigerian TV on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It was on this basis that the self-confessed gay
went to Facebook to ‘teach’ Nigeria how it could overcome its challenges.
Alimi is not a stranger to controversy. He had
received international attention in 2004 when he admitted during an NTA
programme – New Dawn with Funmi – that he was a gay.
He also had a running battle with his alma mater,
the University of Lagos, which threatened to withhold his certificate.
The university had claimed that he “was not going to
be a worthy alumnus”.
Many had linked the Nigeria’s move to have same
sex marriage probation law in 2006 to the controversy generated by Alimi’s
interview with the NTA.
No comments:
Post a Comment