A bill before Nigeria’s National Assembly to ban “same gender marriage” would expand Nigeria’s already draconian punishments for homosexual conduct and threaten all Nigerians’ rights to privacy, free expression, and association, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a letter to President Umaru Yar’Adua, leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate, the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission, and other national, regional, and international bodies, the group urged legislators and the president to reject the bill. The letter urged the country’s leaders to combat an environment of stigma and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Nigerians.

On January 15, 2009, the Nigerian House of Representatives voted favourably on the second reading of a bill “to prohibit marriage between persons of same gender.” The bill would punish people of the same sex who live together “as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship” with up to three years of imprisonment. Anyone who “witnesses, abet[s] and aids” such a relationship could be imprisoned for up to five years.

“This bill masquerades as a law on marriage, but in fact it violates the privacy of anyone even suspected of an intimate relationship with a person of the same sex,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “It also threatens basic freedoms by punishing human rights defenders who speak out for unpopular causes.”

Link to HRW