The proposed law by the Obasanjo administration to ban outright homosexuality in the country is unconstitutional at best and fascistic at worst. According to Obasanjo's minister of justice Bayo Ojo, the proposed law is in response to Obasanjo's concern over homosexual relations and marriage encroaching on the Nigerian nation. Arguing further Bayo Ojo a lawyer, versed in critical legal studies believes that homosexual is basically "un-African", and to drive home his point he refered us to the "holy books", the Bible and the Quran. Of course the minister missed the irony here. Is there anything more un-African than those "holy books"? And since when regional characteristics become a criteria for making law?
Justification for proposing law cannot be its geographical non-identity. This amount to intellectual bankruptcy on the part of the law giver. Law neither hinges on paternalistic whim nor on moral nor on religious world views. Law's authority is to force social integration and enable justice and in democracy the price we pay for our freedom is that equal freedom must be accord dissenting views and morals. Our morality cannot be the basis for law making otherwise law as a means of social integration fails and merely becomes a strategy of social domination.
Nigeria, News, Homosexual, Law, Democracy
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