By Mike Odeh James
The air smelled of smoke and fear. Thirty-seven-year-old butcher Kazeem Bright Adebayo sprinted through Kawo Market with his young apprentice, Yakuba. Around them, stalls burned, people screamed, and machetes flashed in the sunlight.
A neighbor had warned him to flee—rioters were hunting Christians—but he was too late. A mob caught him, hurling insults about his faith and his sexuality. They beat him until he nearly collapsed.
“They called me a kafir [infidel] and dan daudu [a slur for LGBTQ+ people],” Kazeem recalls. “I thought I would die that day.”
It was not the first time his identity put him in mortal danger, and it would not be the last. Over the next 13 years, Kazeem endured torture, imprisonment, and repeated threats until he finally fled Nigeria in early 2024, leaving behind his wife, children, and everything he once called home. His story captures both the brutality of persecution in Nigeria and the fragile hope of survival abroad.
Living a Double Life
Kazeem was born in 1973 into a Muslim family in Iwo, in southwestern Nigeria. From a young age, he felt different. The rigid rules of Islam did not resonate with him. By 2008, he converted to Christianity, joining Mando Church in Kaduna. His baptism in 2009 renewed his faith but ruptured his family ties.
At the same time, he struggled with his bisexuality, an identity hidden at all costs in a country where LGBTQ+ people face criminalization and mob violence. By day, Kazeem worked as a butcher. By night, he connected cautiously with others online, knowing discovery could be fatal.
In 2017, that fear became reality. A phone repairer in Kawo Market stumbled upon private photos of Kazeem with another man. News spread quickly. Friends shunned him. Strangers spat at him in the street.
Violence and Betrayal
The danger deepened after the 2011 presidential election, when Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner, defeated Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim northerner. Riots erupted across northern Nigeria. In Kaduna, mobs targeted both Christians and LGBTQ+ people.
Kazeem’s shop was torched. His attackers accused him of betraying Islam—first by converting, then by living outside heterosexual norms.
“They didn’t see me as human,” he says quietly.
In 2017, he was among 53 people arrested at an underground LGBTQ+ wedding at Janruwa Hotel. Police raided the gathering, beating the attendees and taunting them. Kazeem spent 17 harrowing days in detention before his brother-in-law secured his release with a bribe.
A Dangerous Affair
In 2018, Kazeem entered a relationship with Muhammed, a 22-year-old from a wealthy military family. They kept their love secret, but in 2021 Muhammed’s father discovered their messages. Soon afterward, Kazeem began receiving anonymous death threats.
“I became a ghost,” he recalls. He moved from Abuja to Ilorin, Lagos to Abeokuta, sleeping in churches or unfinished buildings. He had no steady work and little money, but his pursuers did not relent.
In 2023, armed men attacked his neighborhood in Kaduna South, burning homes and scattering families. “They destroyed my home, my church, everything,” he says. He believes Muhammed’s father orchestrated the assault.
When he went to the police, officers gave him an ultimatum: Leave Nigeria or die.
The Escape
Kazeem’s Canadian visa—delayed for years by the pandemic—finally arrived in April 2023. Scraping together funds from selling his last possessions and borrowing from friends, he bought a one-way ticket. On February 2, 2024, he boarded a flight to Toronto.
For the first time in his life, he breathed freely. “I can go to church. I can be myself,” he says. Yet freedom came with a steep price. His wife and children remain in Nigeria, displaced in an IDP camp after their home was destroyed. The separation weighs heavily on him.
“I left them behind because I had no choice,” he confesses. “But I carry them with me every day.”
A System Built Against Him
Nigeria remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for LGBTQ+ people. The Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2014 imposes prison sentences of up to 14 years, while in 12 northern states under Sharia law, same-sex intimacy can be punishable by death.
Converts from Islam face another layer of peril. “You are seen as a traitor twice over—by religion and by culture,” says human-rights activist Chidi Nzurumike. “In Kazeem’s case, the government offered no protection. The family system broke down. His only option was to flee.”
Fragile Hope in Exile
Now living in Canada, Kazeem awaits formal refugee status. He attends church openly, holds his Bible without fear, and dares to imagine a future where he can reunite with his wife and children. But the trauma lingers. Loud noises trigger panic. Nightmares drag him back to Kawo Market, to the day when flames and machetes closed in.
“Freedom is bittersweet,” he says. “I am alive, but my heart is still in Nigeria—with my family.”
At night, he often turns to Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.”
For the first time in years, Kazeem believes those words might be true.
