Pride without Parade

By Prosper Dave Ogechukwu

The first time I heard of Pride Month was from a friend who had relocated to the UK in 2019.  He’d sent me a series of photographs of himself dressed in different outfits and asked which one I preferred. 

“What’s the occasion?” I asked.  

“It’s Pride Month, baybee,” he replied. 

He explained that it was a month dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ identity and community, and that cities across the country would be hosting parades, parties, performances, and public events.  Pride, he said, grew out of protests against police harassment and discrimination, led by queer and trans people such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Stormé DeLarverie. 

I remember being strangely intrigued by how my best friend had, in such a short span of time in a foreign country, become liberated enough to celebrate his queerness so openly; and by the idea that entire streets could be filled with queer folks celebrating themselves in broad daylight.

At the time, I was an eighteen-year-old gay boy living in a deeply religious household in Lagos. I had grown up being taught that attraction to another man was unnatural. As a result, I knew very little about my sexuality beyond the belief that it should be hidden. By extension, I made no effort to engage with LGBTQ+ culture; I did not even know it existed in any meaningful sense. 

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By the time I first encountered Pride as an idea, I was already living inside a framework where visibility was dangerous. In 2014, the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) was signed into law. The Act not only criminalizes same-sex unions but also penalizes the public display of affection between same-sex individuals, with penalty of up to fourteen years’ imprisonment, and up to death by stoning under Sharia Law in Northern states. In many ways, the law further  deepened the limits of queer visibility in Nigeria. It became even more difficult for LGBTQ+ folks to exist openly, let alone gather publicly in celebration of themselves. Beyond law, there is the pressure of societal surveillance, the persistent feeling of being watched by people. In a society where everyone seems to know someone who knows you, anonymity is tenuous. Queer life often unfolds with an acute awareness that being seen by the wrong person can have consequences that extend far beyond a single moment. 

In 2022, while doing extensive research on queer history, I learned about Pride in Lagos, an annual festival organized by QueerCity Media in 2021 for  LGBTQ+ folks to gather and celebrate our existence. I had not taken it seriously until an acquaintance, one of the event’s organizers, talked about said event on his Instagram’s Close Friends story, visible only to a small circle of people. Alongside a ticket link. 

Part of me was curious. I wanted, for once, to know what it felt like to be in a room full of people like me. Another part wondered whether it was worth the risk. Still, I purchased a ticket and attended.  

The event took place at night time, and the venue’s location was shared only a day before the event. From the street, it blended into the surrounding buildings so completely that it would have been easy to walk past without noticing. There was no indication that behind an ordinary facade was a gathering of hundreds of queer people.  

As I stepped inside the building, it became clear that visibility was only one part of the story. The photographs I had encountered over the years only captured Pride from the outside. The images could not capture the support structures that made the celebration possible, the relief of entering a room where no explanation was necessary. A small but profound difference: one is about being seen, the other is about being known. Some people seemed to arrive in stages. A jacket stayed on until they were through the door, revealing men in mesh tops. A face cap would come off, revealing bright ceremonial makeup. Metallic fabric caught the low light. The version of themselves that moved through Lagos during the day slowly gave way to someone less guarded. I remember thinking that everyone looked like they had negotiated with themselves before arriving, deciding how visible they were going to be for the night. 

I had arrived in a plain T-shirt and jeans with nothing to change to, looking unfit for the occasion.  

There was often a moment of adjustment, however. Just as I was, I noticed that some people too were testing to see if the room could really hold them. Gatherings like this held a particular emotional tension, I’d come to fully understand: the relief of being among people who understood existing alongside the habits of caution learned elsewhere. You could see both emotions at once. Someone would laugh too loudly and then glance towards the entrance. Another would settle into a conversation only after scanning the room. Watching it unfold made it clear how much energy LGBTQ+ people spent managing themselves outside these walls, and how rare it was to find a place where that vigilance could soften, even temporarily.  

As the night went on, the evening gradually became a collective experience. Confinement did little to diminish the sense of ceremony. Instead of dispersing into a city that wasn’t safe for us, all that expression folded inward and intensified. 

The ballroom began later. The host announced the theme of the ball, All That Glitters in Lagos, and suddenly it made sense why there were so many glitters brushed across people’s cheeks.

It is difficult to describe the ballroom here without flattening it into an imitation of a foreign tradition. The adaptation was distinctly Nigerian. Even with the framework  of global ballroom culture, local aesthetics surfaced. Unlike the fitted clothes one might typically wear, people walked categories with Ankara prints cut into silhouettes paired with laces or meshes, and exaggerated head pieces. It was less of a competition and more of a collaboration. 

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Just on the other side of the building, an art exhibition was unfolding at the same time for those who preferred to immerse themselves in art. The works were created by LGBTQ+ artists, some of whom spoke about pieces they could not publicly exhibit elsewhere because they did not fit within accepted social norms. 

Still, there was a tension underneath everything. Queer Nigerians were creating joy, but it required architecture. The event itself was evidence of that labor. Not just the performances, but the coordination behind them, the networks of trust, the organizers creating a space where hundreds of small calculations about safety could briefly be set aside. None of it happened  accidentally. That is what Pride becomes here, a structure of survival that still manages to feel  like celebration. 

The experience carried excitement for me because I was finally witnessing something I had spent years imagining from a distance. And the more comfortable the room became, the harder it was to ignore how exceptional it was.  

I found myself thinking about how many versions of ourselves exist in a city like Lagos. There is the version that moves through workplaces, family homes, religious spaces, and public streets.  Then there is the version that emerges in rooms like this one, among people who require no explanation. The distance between those selves can be exhausting. 

Yet perhaps that is what made the gathering feel so significant. Nobody in the room was waiting for perfect conditions before choosing joy. Nobody was waiting for legal recognition, social  acceptance, or complete safety before finding reasons to celebrate one another. And what I witnessed was not a lesser version of Pride because it unfolded behind closed doors. If anything,  it revealed dimensions of community that spectacle can sometimes obscure. The event was not  built around visibility for the wider public; it was built around the simple but profound  experience of being among people who did not require explanation. 

Pride here is defined by the community that continues to create space for themselves despite the  risk attached in doing so.