afrol News, 10 August - A Sharia judge in Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Bauchi, Malam Tanimu, ordered the remand in prison of 18 suspected gay Nigerians. The men will be stoned to death if they are found guilty by the Shariah courts.

The men reportedly hailed from a neighbouring state. Dressed like women, they stormed Bauchi to celebrate a gay wedding.

The State Prosecutor, Tadius Boboi, said the men acted against Sharia, a system governing Bauchi and other Muslim-dominated northern Nigerian states.

Since the introduction of Sharia in Nigeria seven years back, a dozen of Muslims have been sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery or sodomy. However, no single person was stoned to death.

But two thieves in the north-western Zamfara State, the origin of Nigeria's Sharia, have had their hands amputated.

One Nigerian man was convicted by a Sharia court in Kano to six months in prison after he was found guilty of imitating women’s way of life for years.

Efforts to outlaw gay rights organisations in Nigeria had met the rock during the days of Obasanjo. Mounting pressures from human and gay rights groups, criticising the government of not being sensitive to the rights of all its citizens.

But the fact of the matter is that same sex affairs or marriages are still kept under the carpet in Nigeria. A woman who was accused of trying to arrange lesbian weddings fled the country.

Last year, South Africa became the fifth country in the world to legalise same sex marriages. But lesbians and gays have since been battling with the society to accept them instead of physically attacking or cursing them.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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