Friends, colleagues and strangers all learned of the allegations from the videos that circulated online. Video footage of the August 2018 news conference has since been viewed more than half a million times. The phrase “they didn’t caught me” quickly went viral. They didn’t caught me,” shouted James Brown, a wiry young man who said he had been hired to dance at a birthday party and had done nothing wrong. “What is the definition of a gay? It is when you are caught having sex, intercourse, with a guy. Most of them remained quiet, but others answered journalists’ questions.
The cameras panned over the faces of the men, capturing expressions of shame, fear and anger. “It is the duty of everybody, not only the police, to ensure that such antisocial behavior, such social vices, such crimes, are checked so that we can create communities that protect our children from such deviant behavior,” he said.
That law, which drew international condemnation when it came into force in 2014, targets not only same-sex unions but homosexual relations in general with prison terms of up to 14 years. Standing behind a bank of microphones, the Lagos state police commissioner, Imohimi Edgal, told the gathered journalists that he personally had ordered the raid that swept up the men after the authorities received a tipoff that young men were being initiated into a “homosexual club.”Įdgal declared that homosexuality ran contrary to the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.
