Just yesterday I stumbled into a very interesting chat with someone who lives in Kano state. Northern Nigeria. His name is Akeem, he got my contact from the Takingitglobal (TIG) website. Hardly had I signed into my yahoo messenger than he buzzed me with an introduction of himself and where he got my contact. The conversation began. Akeem is a gay guy without an active sexual life According to him, he was then obligated to chat with because he discovered from TIG that I am gay also and live Lagos, South-west, Nigeria. He asked if I could link him up to someone with whom he can express his sexual feelings. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that for him because I do not know anyone in Kaduna state nevertheless I was able to make him continue the chat by getting to know more about him and his sexual experiences. Suddenly I dropped in the issues of HIV/AIDS by asking him what he knows about it. He said he does not believe in the existence of the infection……. “It is not real” he said. He went further and said even if it is real; he can never get infected by the virus as he is a gay person and does not have sex with the opposite sex who is the only source of infection. Having known about his academic status as being an undergraduate in his third year in the University, I was very surprised at his judgment. I did not interrupt him as he tried to make his opinion clear. When he was through, I got mute didn’t know how to change his mind set to the understanding of HIV/AIDS and its effect. I know of so many web links I could refer to and I sent it to him. I couldn’t get his response about them as he told him; he was running out of time in the café.

Nonetheless, I feel that there is a lot to be done when it comes to HIV/AIDS awareness programs in Nigeria. The awareness programs are restricted to the sexual majority neglecting the minorities. Akeem belongs to the minorities and due to the biases of the society where he belong has no information on how he could get infected by the deadly virus even as a gay guy. I hope very soon the Nigerian government will realize the effect of this and would begin to have an all inclusive HIV/AIDS awareness program of which everyone regardless of the sexual orientation would know when getting expose to the risk of contracting the virus.

Written by:
Akoro Joseph.S
+2348054814432
nigerianbloke@yahoo.com, sewedo@yahoo.com