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Abuja Area Mama was reportedly on her way to visit with her boyfriend.
The battered and bruised body of Abuja Area Mama, a popular transgender TikTok influencer, was found along a highway in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Thursday, the BBC and local media reported.
The 33-year-old influencer was reportedly on her way to visit her boyfriend when she was murdered. She often posted about life as a transgender woman in Nigeria as well as about being a sex worker.
LGBTQ+ rights have been under attack in Nigeria in recent years, according to human rights group Outright International. The group notes that half of the country adopted, "a form of Sharia Law that makes same-sex relations punishable by death and criminalizes gender expression which does not correspond with gender norms associated with the sex assigned at birth."
On the federal level, same-sex sexual relations are illegal in the country, punishable with prison sentences of 10 to 14 years.
Police detectives were on the scene Thursday morning. Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson, confirmed the discovery of Mama to the Nigerian Daily Post and said Abuja Chief of Police Benneth Igweh had ordered a “thorough and discreet” investigation.
Mama wrote she was “getting ready to go and see my boyfriend last” in what turned out to be her final post to social media two days ago. Her body was found hours later.
The country consistently ranks near or at the bottom in public surveys cited by the Equaldex Equality Index, which measures freedoms, rights, laws, and public attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community. Only two percent of the population supports marriage equality and over 94 percent do not believe in the “justifiability” of homosexuality.
A 2004 report from Human Rights Watch said Nigerian vigilante groups known as hisbah are operating outside the secular legal system to enforce their version of Sharia law. They often target and violently abuse the LGBTQ+ community.
“In most northern states, hisbah and sharia implementation committees have been given the task of enforcing sharia and ensuring that the population observes it in their day-to-day activities,” HRW wrote in its report.
In 2018, 47 men in Lagos were arrested by the hisbah and accused of “being initiated into a gay club,” although the men claimed they were only attending a birthday party. A judge later threw out the case when prosecutors failed to produce any witnesses or show up at trial.
The Kano kisbah also arrested 19 men and women, accusing them of attending a same-sex marriage. A spokesperson for the hisbah said they acted after receiving a tip about the alleged wedding.
"Our men broke into the venue where a gay couple was holding a wedding and arrested 19 men and women, including the wedding planner," Lawan Ibrahim Fagge told the Agence France Press in a statement.
Last year, numerous gay men reported they were victims of an entrapment scheme that resulted in kidnappings, beatings, and extortion. Mohammed, a father of three, told BBC Africa Eye he was entrapped and then blackmailed by a man he met through a dating app. Instead of a private encounter, he was met by a group of men who beat him and demanded money. They then forced him to appear naked in a video, which the men later posted online.
Also last year, police detained 67 people celebrating a same-sex wedding. State police spokesperson Bright Edafe told reporters at the time that homosexuality “will never be tolerated” in Nigeria after the “gay suspects” were apprehended.
