There is palpable apprehension in Enugu, the capital of Enugu state, over the whereabouts of two suspected gay men, who escaped from the village’s custody after their arrest by a vigilante group in the early hours of June 20, 2017. Sources revealed that one of the suspects identified as Cosmas, a middle-aged man, was said to be playing host to his friend and ‘lover’, one Chukwunoye, now at large, when the bubble burst.
Blueprint gathered that Cosmas had always been suspected by his neighbours of being homosexual, and on that fateful day, the vigilante men were said to have laid in wait for the duo, after getting a tipoff from a local beer parlour where they were said to have exhibited some “startling provocative behaviour.”
The vigilante group, led by one Vincent Onyeagubolam, trailed the suspected homosexuals to Cosmas’ house, broke into it and allegedly caught him and his guest in the homosexual act.
They were said to have received the beating of their lives, tortured and forced to drink their urine by the irate vigilante men. The suspected homosexuals were about to be set ablaze, but for the intervention of an elderly community leader, Chief Nwandu Ukpaka, who persuaded the vigilante group not to take the laws into their hands, but rather hand them over to the village head who would recommend adequate punitive measures, like performing necessary rituals to cleanse the land which the duo has desecrated through their shameful act.
After hearing the allegation against the suspects, the village head, Chief Okpi advised the head of the vigilante group to lock them up in one of the rooms in his house and return them in the morning for questioning with a view to ascertaining culpability.
However, the men made a dramatic escape before morning, ripping off an old air conditioner on the wall and escaped through the opening and scaled the perimeter fence of the premises. However, luck ran out on the fleeing homosexuals, as the business card of one of them, a lawyer by profession, dropped off in the premises while making good their escape.
The police, it was further gathered, are working on the lead to unravel the whereabouts of the culprits as at the time of this report. The federal laws of Nigeria prescribe a jail term of 10 – 15 years for all forms of homosexuality, while in most states that have adopted the Islamic Sharia code, punishment for homosexuality is death penalty.
