Oludare Odumuye

Working a country where discrimination and harassment against homosexuals is the norm, Dare Odumuye gathers and trains a community of gay men and women to step forward and secure rights and health care for sexual minorities throughout the West African region.

Dare leads campaigns to bring homosexuality proudly into the public light and to secure rights and legal protections for gay communities in the whole of West Africa. He starts with rigorous research establishing the link between HIV transmission and stigmatized sex between men. He uses hard numbers from his research to advocate for public acceptance of homosexuality and to direct interventions for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. At the same time, he trains gay men and women to prevent the spread of HIV in their own communities and to advocate for their rights in local and national forums. Through his campaigns to protect the rights of gay people—among the most heavily stigmatized groups in Nigeria—Dare leads the way toward greater tolerance among all groups.

If there is one thing that unites most Nigerians across lines of religion, ethnicity, or social standing, it is the belief that homosexuality is a sin to be stomped out by all means necessary. The Nigerian government has been open and even proud about its homophobic stance, standing as one of the few governments to oppose the Brazil Resolution on Sexual Orientation at the UN Commission on Human Rights. Because an open declaration of homosexuality in Nigeria can quite easily result in beatings or even murder—because even police and other government officials join in open acts of discrimination—Nigerian homosexuals find themselves with no rational choice but to keep their sexual identity secret.
Severe stigma brings thousands of gay men in Nigeria to lead double lives, causing psychological torment for themselves and for their wives. Secrecy about sex partners also exposes the gay community to great risk of infection from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Men who are sleeping with men have little information about how to protect themselves from HIV infection because they are afraid or ashamed to seek such information. Because many Nigerian men have more than one sex partner, even including multiple wives, the virus can spread quickly to women and to children.
Even worse, health-focused groups in Nigeria have no reliable information on the gay community. Even the most basic of questions about the community’s size and makeup still elude the current health system. As a result, efforts to reach gay men with HIV-prevention efforts have met with almost universal failure. Living in constant fear of being discovered, and with no strategies to prevent the transmission of a deadly disease, gay men are among the populations at highest risk in Nigeria.

Dare works through his organization Alliance Rights to study and solve the problems facing the gay community in Nigeria. He directed his first efforts to the study of HIV transmission among homosexuals, knowing that research on public health would sidestep the stigma that so often cripples programs dealing with sexuality. His team gathered data on the status of the HIV epidemic among sexual minority groups in Nigeria. The data provided a first glimpse and the characteristics and needs of gay communities, and provided Dare with the hard numbers he needed to advocate for openness about homosexuality in public policy. His campaigns have brought many victories, notably convincing the National AIDS and STD Control Program to include the category “men sleeping with men” in all its upcoming studies. Through rigorous research, Dare establishes Alliance Rights as a well-informed and trustworthy voice in public affairs, and at the same time establishes the importance of gay communities to all programs for public health.
Building on the success of his research, Dare pushes to improve public attitudes toward sexual minorities and encourage greater openness among the community of gay Nigerians. He educates journalists, policymakers, and development agencies on the damaging effects of homophobia and partners with them to fight it. He runs trainings and conferences to build the capacity of sexual minorities as advocates, counselors, activists, and educators. As his trainings provide concrete skills for education and advocacy, they make it a specific priority to inspire confidence and self-esteem in the gay community, to encourage sexual minorities to take pride in their identity. At Alliance-organized gatherings around the country, thousands of men and women are stepping forward to say that they are gay.
Bringing homosexuality proudly into the public consciousness is a crucial step toward addressing the psychological problems and health threats facing the gay community. Dare puts his movement toward gay pride to work, recruiting gay men and women into programs for HIV prevention and connecting them to supportive counseling programs. He extends these programs to adolescents and university students, partnering with national and international HIV prevention organizations to increase their impact.
In 2003, Dare dramatically expanded the reach of his ideas by founding the West African Gay and Lesbian Association at the annual Alliance Rights convention in Ibadan, Nigeria. Over thirty country representatives from the West African region joined the several hundred Nigerian attendees in celebrating the birth of the new Association. Through this new group, Dare shares ideas with a broad network of activists and fosters collective action for gay rights across national borders. He positions the Association to draw informal networks of sexual minorities, now local and secretive, into region-wide campaigns for pride and rights.

For Dare Odumuye, growing up gay was a daily nightmare. He was constantly harassed by his peers at school and in his neighborhood. When he sought out supportive communities in underground nightclubs, he was beaten and harassed in frequent police raids. Through years of harsh experience, Dare gained a deep understanding of homophobia and its impact on Nigerian society. Tired of living like a hunted animal, and committed to make a change, Dare declared his gay status publicly and set up the Alliance Rights in 1999 to protect and advance the rights of sexual minorities.
In August 2001, Dare attended a two-week intensive course on HIV prevention and care at the Lithani AIDS Project in Johannesburg, South Africa. As part of the course, he was given a routine HIV-antibody test, and tested positive for the virus. Rather than being crushed by this news, Dare drew strength from the supportive environment and redoubled his efforts to secure rights and acceptance for gay communities throughout West Africa.