Being part of the queer community in Nigeria is very dangerous. Catfishing and attacks are not the only cruelties to which the LGBT+ community is frequently subjected to, but another common habit to hurt these people is through a system known as “kito”. “Kito” is a practice involving someone pretending to be interested in a relationship with a target, usually through social media or dating apps, and charming that person into a meet up where they are then physically and verbally assaulted. Sometimes the predator ends up filming the attack. 

The Women’s Health and Equal Rights (WHER) founder and executive director, Akudo Oguanghamba, explains that “Kito” represents is nothing more than what frequently happens to LGBT+ community members worldwide. When the victims of this practice are women, experts claimed that these attacks can typically become more sexual in nature and more prolonged, and they can even consist in a “collective rape” , when the assault is done only due to the victim’s sexual orientation and to “turn them” heterosexual. Attacks against the queer community have always happened. However, a significant increase has been registered in the last decade. 

In 2023, The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs ), an organisation working with the queer community in Nigeria, helped 65 men, women, intersex and trans people in Nigeria who were targeted as kito victims. Other nonprofits also helped more than 550 people who were blackmailed and extorted. TIERs’ advocacy and communications officer, Damola Bolaji, says that statistics only partially reveal the real number of attacks that have occurred during that period, since queer women are less likely to share their experiences because they are treated like second class citizens. Society dictates that Nigerian women should get married and have children, and nothing more. Furthermore, the fact that many queer Nigerians are reluctant to reveal their sexuality means that they are not able to loudly denounce their atrocious experiences. 

Experts blame this increase of kito attacks against queer Nigerians on high levels of homophobia, fuelled by conservative and deeply religious societal views in the country. Others believe that attacks raised exponentially after the releasing of the “Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act” signed in 2014, which prohibited same-sex marriage. Mikinde, the interim executive director of The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs), argued that attacks on the community have always taken place in Nigeria, but after the act was passed, homophobes felt emboldened to behave abysmally towards queers. 

Even though the word “kito” is strictly linked to a Nigerian context, this woeful behaviour of online bullying and attacks on LGBT+ people offline is not unique to Nigeria. However, even though anti-LGBT+ prejudice is, sadly, not uncommon in other African countries like Cameroon, Nigeria’s Constitution and its Cybercrime Act should, in theory, protect every citizen regardless of their sexual orientation. The digital lawyer Mojirayo Ogunlana suggested that one way to support victims of these attacks is to allow LGBT+ organisations to inform people and society at large about how to deal with and investigate kito cases.