The Cost of Blazing a Trail in Nigeria

Actor Adebisi Alimi came out on Nigerian television in 2004, when his sexual orientation was the last thing he wanted to be known for.

NPR.org reports:

Alimi's acting career was just starting to take off when his sexuality stole the spotlight. The student newspaper at University of Lagos, where he was studying theater, threatened to publish a photo of him with his then-boyfriend. So Alimi beat them to the punch. He went on New Dawn with Funmi, one of the most popular talk shows in Nigeria, and challenged a long-held belief that homosexuality was brought to Africa by white colonizers. That was also the year Alimi was diagnosed with HIV.

Suddenly, his home country no longer saw him as a rising star. Alimi lost his roles on TV and on stage, many of his friends shunned him and the police even arrested him on unexplained charges. In 2007, things got worse. He was detained at the airport on his way back from the United Kingdom, where he gave an interview to BBC Network Africa, and was released two days later. Then a group of men entered his home and attempted to kill him. Alimi fled to the U.K. and hasn't been back to Nigeria since.

But Alimi says, 'My story is not a story of a victim; it's a human story.' Without it, he says, he wouldn't be the outspoken activist he is today.

Read the rest of the profile at NPR.org.