LONDON, March 29, 2007  –  While the draconian Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2006 appears to be ‘stalled in the Nigerian House of Representative – the lower house of the country’s parliament, there will be no celebrations in the gay community just yet.

There is some confusion as to whether the House had last week gone into recess prior to next month’s Federal elections – AllAfrica.com reported on Sunday that the recess was due to commence yesterday (March 28), while the Nigerian press itself was reporting that the recess started over a week ago.

Changing Attitude, the British-based Anglican LGBT group, explained in a press release issued today that the Federal elections are scheduled to be held on 21 April and the ceremonial opening of the new session of Parliament on May 29, 2007, which the constitution recognises as the hand over date to a new government.

“The present sitting of the House has finished, and they asked the panel of Human Rights which continues to meet, to go and review the bill again,” Changing Attitude (CA) explains.

“It is difficult to say categorically that the current House has been totally suspended because a lot of manoeuvring is taking place ahead of the election, but it may be reasonably safe to assume the bill has been abandoned for now.

“What we are hearing from Changing Attitude Nigeria members from Anglican congregations in Nigeria is that the church leaders have been feeling big pressure on them and some are very angry because they expected the bill to be voted on prior to the end of this session.

“There are also rumours that money has exchanged hands, American money, and yet it has not proved easy for the Anglican Church leaders to push the bill through the House of Representatives. Corruption remains widespread at every level of Nigerian society,” the press release, received via the Episcopal gay group IntegrityUSA, suggests.

CA pointed out that it is also theoretically possible for the next government to reintroduce the bill, though this would be unlikely in the first term as politicians would be trying to satisfy many different expectations as a result of the elections.

“Because of the continuing uncertainty, Changing Attitude Nigeria will not celebrate the defeat of the bill publicly until after May 29,” Davis Mac-Iyalla, director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, said today.

We are quietly confident and feeling more happy, but there is still the potential for lobbying in favour of the bill to take place by the Church of Nigeria and for the Government to spring a surprise,” he pointed out.

“However, if the Church was confident about the success of the bill, we think they would be issuing a confident public statement now, which they are not.”

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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 22:00 (UK time)