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Miss Ebele Ngozi Okwuosa, 32, has every reason to thank her stars for being alive and in good health.
At the age of 12, she had been orphaned, forcing her to be adopted by a lesbian aunt before her 13th birthday. It was while being taken care of by the aunt that she got introduced to lesbianism as a teenager.
A few months ago, Okwuosa had faced the greatest challenge of her life. Having herself since been a lesbian, she had for several years lived life in her sex choice. But not until a mob of mainly youth and a few elders took it upon themselves to eliminate all lesbians in the Awka area of Anambra State, south east Nigeria, in a manner suggesting that they took the law into their hands.
For effect, the mob had caught up with two of Okwuosa’s friends and fellow lesbians and before they could fully comprehend the situation they were in, the mob murdered them.
This got Okwuosa terrified, forcing her to move from place to place especially at night, having been led to believe she would be the next target.
“This was how my problem started in October 2024. I felt so unsafe because the anti-lesbian mob were really on the loose. Of course, I didn’t feel safe in my family house because the mob could easily locate me there” she told Blueprint.
“I managed to escape to Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, in December 2024 after tense periods for me while trying my best to ensure I wasn’t detected,” Okwuosa said.
Unknown to her, however, the Anambra mob had commenced moves to trail her to Lagos as they felt she had an advantage to relocate from Lagos to another city in Nigeria.
“I wasn’t moving around in Lagos regularly but I still noticed some strange people trailing me wherever I went. The whole thing became a hell for me. By this time, I could not even communicate to my family any more for fear of being trailed,” the beleaguered Okwuosa also said.
However, luck shone on her as she was able to perfect her papers through the help of her brother in-law, Mr. Sylvester Azubuike, enabling her to travel to Europe thereby escaping from her trauma in Nigeria.
“My nightmare ended after I arrived in Europe. But I cannot but look back at how I lost two friends in such grisly manner for no offence other than their sex choices. I spent days recalling the incident but I feel lucky to have escaped being murdered too,” she said.
Now safe in France, Okwuosa looks forward to carrying on with normal life as bi-sexual with a view to fulfilling her ambition to get married and bear children in the near future.
Nigeria, a country of about 250 million people with over 500 ethnic groups, is culturally opposed to lesbianism but in the absence of a comprehensive state policy on the subject, some citizens have taken upon themselves to effect untold terror on those they perceive as lesbians.
Like Okwuosa, many young Nigerian lesbian women have been subjected to indignities of many kinds. While some have been lucky to survive, others have lost their lives in the process.
