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World Congress Of Families To Honor Nigerian Activist Who Claims Gay Rights Advocates In 'Conspiracy' With Boko Haram

Yesterday, the World Congress of Families announced(link is external) the recipients of its annual Lifetime Achievement Awards and “Natural Family Man and Woman of the Year Awards.”

Naturally, WCF – which recently suspended planning on a conference at the Kremlin (link is external) due to the crisis in Ukraine – has chosen to present the awards to an array of activists who have been working to suppress reproductive rights and to push harmful anti-gay policies around the world.

The recipients include an Australian cabinet minister(link is external), the leader of a British social conservative group who has campaigned against gay rights in Jamaica(link is external) and Russia(link is external), and a Venezuelan activist close to the Vatican who has warned that expanding gay rights in Latin America will lead to “people dying of AIDS like flies(link is external).”

Also receiving an award is WCF’s own African regional director(link is external), Theresa Okafor of Nigeria, who also heads the conservative groups Foundation for African Cultural Heritage (FACH) and Life League Nigeria.

Okafor’s group backed Nigeria’s recent ban on all same-sex relationships, which included a ban on gay people meeting in groups of two or more(link is external). The ban quickly led to arrests of reportedly dozens of people alleged to be gay(link is external). In January, FACH joined a coalition of NGOS that commended(link is external) Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan for signing the law. In April, FACH shared on its Facebook page(link is external) videos of a press conference(link is external) it organized in support of the bill in which speakers called homosexuality “abhorrent”(link is external) and compared it(link is external) to alcoholism(link is external).

In a speech to the World Congress of Families annual gathering in Madrid in 2012(link is external), Okafor speculated that Western countries advocating for gay rights in Africa were involved in “a conspiracy” to “silence Christians” with the terrorist group Boko Haram. “Unfortuntately, in Nigeria where I come from, we have these fundamentalists, the Boko Haram – I’m sure you’ve heard about them in the news – bombing churches. They seem to be helping some people in Western countries who are out to silence Christians. The Boko Haram are targeting Christians in Nigeria, so you wonder if there’s a conspiracy between the two worlds,” she said.

In the speech, Okafor defended moves toward harsh anti-gay laws in Nigeria and Uganda and speculated that efforts to defend LGBT rights in Africa are “another ploy to depopulate Africa.”

In 2011, Equality Matters ran down Okafor and FACH’s anti-gay activism(link is external):

FACH is an umbrella organization that includes a variety of right-wing organizations such as the Association of Concerned Mothers, Nigerian Association for Family Development, Doctors Health Initiative, Life League Nigeria, the Christian Association of Bishops Conference of Nigeria and the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Nigeria.

Among her achievements, Okafor counts(link is external) keeping sex education out of Nigerian schools while eschewing the “conspiracy to strip Africa of its cherished values by international organizations like Planned Parenthood and the United Nations.”

Okafor also managed to convince(link is external) the conservative World Congress of Families to hold its first “African conference” in Abuja, Nigeria in 2009, a gathering that this unambiguously homophobic article(link is external) from a Nigerian outlet hailed as “aimed at giving the Nigerian perspective to a troubled world lurching from one moral crisis to another.”

Okafor also recently refuted the notion that LGBT people experience prejudice in Nigeria.

“I have heard accusations that they are being discriminated against,” Okafor said(link is external), “but this is completely false because if you think deeply about it, it is not the person that is being despised, it is the conduct.”

Okafor has also worked(link is external) closely(link is external) with the American group Family Watch International.