Gay Marriage: Nigeria And US In Diplomatic Row.... We’re free to make our own laws--- Says FG

NIGERIA and the United States may be heading for a significant diplomatic confrontation regarding the issue of homosexuality, which the Nigerian Senate recently criminalised in line with the country's long-time values, beliefs and widely pervasive resentment of Nigerians to homosexuality.

According to an online news organisation, Empire Newswire, the United States president, Barack Obama and the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have taken critical steps to serve notice to countries like Nigeria, where homosexuality is a crime, indicating the readiness of the US government to diplomatically fight such countries on the matter, as if it is a human rights issue.

One immediate area that the fight may occur is in the US global funding, from which Nigerian civil society groups could benefit. The US government, sources said on Wednesday, would fund civil society groups in the affected countries like Nigeria where homosexuality had been criminalised to engage such government.

It was not clear on Wednesday night whether such countries like Nigeria could potentially lose existing US funding all together because of the homosexuality controversy. But agencies that Obama asked to implement the order include the US EXIM Bank and USAID, both of which have significant funding projects and assistance programmes in Nigeria.

At a formal press briefing on Tuesday by Senior US Administrations officials, it was made clear that "there are around 80 countries in the world where lesbians, gay bisexual and transgender status or conduct is still criminalised, so certainly, those 80 countries would be priority areas," in the US diplomatic confrontation

The senior official, in answer to a specific question regarding the application of new global funding promised by the US, added that "the secretary and the presidential memo both make clear that it's part of our human rights policy that we do not think that it should be criminal to be gay. So those are places where I think investing in civil society, particularly in order to make the progress in terms of the legal realm that allows civil society to continue, progress and foster tolerance, would be priority areas; if you were looking for some.

Just as President Obama was issuing a presidential executive order on Tuesday afternoon in Washington DC, directing US embassies around the world to target countries opposed to homosexuality, Mrs Clinton was laying out a similar agenda in the UN in Geneva on the same day.

Diplomatic sources hinted on Wednesday that the timing of the Obama presidential order was too closely tied to the recent passing of a bill by the Senate banning same-sex marriage and relationships. And considering that Nigeria is the biggest African nation by population and also the biggest black nation in the world, the move by the Senate to outlaw homosexuality is seen as a significant governmental move that the US and other Western capitals can't ignore,