Almost a year ago, in August 2025, Hilary Ikechukwu Emereole, a 23-year-old queer man, boarded a bus in the Nigerian city of Owerri and travelled one hundred kilometres south to Port Harcourt, where he had arranged to meet a friend at a hotel.
Emereole later told close friends that this meeting was a trap.
The two men went up to a room together. After a few minutes, Emereole’s supposed friend said he was going to get them some drinks. He returned with several other people. They turned up the television volume and began assaulting Emereole, eventually knocking him unconscious and stealing his personal items. His ‘friend’ contacted his family to demand a ransom. If he was not paid in ten minutes, he told them, Emereole would be killed.
“By 2am the following day, Emereole regained consciousness to find the door was locked, the gang members asleep on the bed, and the window was the only unguarded exit,” said Chizelu Emejulu, the executive director of Minority Watch, an NGO that has investigated Emereole’s death and submitted its findings to the police to urge them to arrest and prosecute the alleged perpetrators.
Emereole called for help out the window. “The room was two storeys high, but that didn’t stop him from trying,” Emejulu said. But his cries woke his attackers; they physically assaulted him again before throwing him from the building’s window, causing him to lose consciousness again.
Emereole died from his injuries months later. To this day, no arrests have been made.
The entrapment of and violence against queer men, known colloquially as kito, has become commonplace in Nigeria, especially since the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act was signed into law in January 2014. The law, which carries a 14-year prison sentence for same-sex marriage, is widely misinterpreted as a criminalisation of same-sex activities or queer expression and has long been criticised for enabling harassment by both state and non-state actors.
The Initiative for Minority Excellence and Development Nigeria saw a 600% increase in the number of reports of kito cases it received between August 2025 and February this year, according to the NGO’s executive director, Olawale Shittu.
“We used to receive like two cases per month previously, but during this time frame, it turned into three to four cases per week,” Shittu told openDemocracy, describing the trend as “very alarming and worrisome to many of us in the community”.
In 2022, a report by The Initiative for Equal Rights, a Nigeria-based non-profit, documented 545 cases affecting 561 people, including 150 cases of extortion, 143 of blackmail, 127 of kidnapping and 127 of assault.
Many kito cases are recorded in southern Nigeria, such as in Port Harcourt, where Emereole was attacked, said Emejulu of Minority Watch. “We are not aware of such spikes in the north,” he said.
“This is Igbo land,” said Anambra-based human rights activist Okechukwu Joshua, referring to an ethnic group of 20 to 30 million people primarily inhabiting southeastern Nigeria, where homophobia is pervasive, driven by a combination of colonial-era laws, religious fundamentalism and socio-political factors. “It is considered an abomination for a man to be with a man. Armed with the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, many feel justified,” added Joshua, who is also a community healthcare worker and paralegal.
While it is not clear whether violence against queer people is on the rise or if more people are deciding to report attacks, Joshua believes the spike in reports is in part due to a law that many read as permission for such attacks, combined with the collision of old stigma and the increased public visibility of queer people – particularly on social media. Queer people are easier to identify, easier to target and harder to protect.
DIY justice vs police protection
In April 2025, three months before Emereole’s attack, James* decided to post on social media about what had happened to him five years earlier. In 2020, he had arranged a date with a man he’d met online years before and had grown to trust. What he expected to be a romantic meeting turned out to be an ambush. Several men – including his date – were waiting.
“They told me they had just finished beating someone else. There were blood stains on their shirts,” he told openDemocracy.
James was beaten and robbed. He did not report the incident to the police because he feared being judged, blamed because of his sexuality or arrested. This fear is common, Joshua says. In his experience, survivors expect backlash, not protection. “Some would rather die than talk to the police about their kito cases,” he said.
That silence is shaped not just by homophobia but by fear of institutions. The number of raids, illegal stops and searches, arbitrary arrests and extortion by the police, Hisbah (an Islamic police force responsible for the enforcement of Shari’a), and other law enforcement agencies have grown in Nigeria over the past four years, according to a 2023 human rights violations report by The Initiative for Equal Rights. For many queer survivors, reporting a kito attack means risking exposure to another form of abuse.
Last year, James eventually decided to share what had happened to him on X, naming his attacker in the hopes of warning other people. “This is Nigeria; calling them on here [X] is 100% more effective [than going to the police]. I am sure over 100 people saw that post and are going to stay away from him. It helps others take precautions,” he said.
Months later, Emereole’s attack and subsequent death received unprecedented national publicity. It had a cascading effect, prompting even more people to publicly discuss their experiences of violence and entrapment, naming their kito attackers online – and in doing so, outing and endangering themselves.
On X, allegations now move quickly. Under viral posts warning about suspected kito perpetrators, users reply with screenshots, photographs and firsthand accounts. These posts often include the alleged perpetrator’s name, social media accounts, phone number, location and a short account of how someone was attacked or nearly attacked.
Despite the risks involved, for some survivors, silence now feels more dangerous than exposure. In an interview with openDemocracy, Mat, a queer person, said X has shifted how many users think about shame and victimhood.
“Queer people on X have deconstructed shame and what it means to be ashamed for being a victim or survivor of kito entrapment,” they said. “We have created a community on X that is very liberal. We are connected. People know people, so it feels safe.”
Public posts also bring support, they said, making exposure feel less like self-endangerment than a way to warn others and avoid facing the aftermath alone. In the absence of visible police action, online exposure has become the closest thing many survivors have to accountability.
Advocates also say the incidents are not entirely random. Certain meeting points – particularly busy areas and big marketplaces – come up repeatedly in survivor accounts. “Places like Ihiala, Obosi around Onitsha, Ifite near the Second Market axis in Awka, and Nnewi come up often when people talk about kito experiences,” Okechukwu said. As such, the online reporting provides an unofficial map of risk that is quietly acknowledged in queer networks.
Police officials across several jurisdictions told openDemocracy they had received no recent complaints connected to the incidents circulating online. Olasunkanmi Musiliu and Imade Graham, assistant commissioners of police in Ughelli and Warri, respectively, said they were unaware of such reports, while ACP Alabi Abiodun of the Ihiala command said he was familiar with kito but had received no recent complaints.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Emereole’s death has encountered delays. MinorityWatch’s Emejulu said police have requested funds for mobilisation – essentially money to act or even make arrests – which is not an unusual step in Nigeria but has slowed the process. “Sadly, we don’t have the funds the police are requesting, but we are hopeful we can raise them,” he said wistfully.
Justice is some way off.
