By Mark Baber
March 11 – As FIFA seeks clarification over reported remarks by the head of the Nigeria Women Professional League (NWPL), a tape of the controversial interview has been released by Nigeria’s Premium Times and activists have called for a FIFA ban.
In the interview tape, released on YouTube on Friday [http://youtu.be/OgqVCg_bEMc], Dilichukwu Onyedinma, head of the NPWL, asked about the ‘secret’ practice of lesbianism in Nigerian football, said: “Exactly, you said it, this is happening in secret. We have people that we’re asking to look into clubs.
“You know that this thing has to do with particular clubs. There are particular clubs that frown at it. They don’t even want to hear it. Once they hear it, the players are sacked. So it is a practice that is very bad, even in our bible it is condemned. You know of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the bible Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of this kind of act. So we don’t tolerate it.”
Asked for confirmation that lesbianism is not tolerated in Nigerian football she says: “Yeah, we don’t tolerate lesbianism and we always discuss it whenever we meet. We always warn clubs and club chairmen, to please tell their players to desist from it, because any player that we pick for national competitions, and we hear a little story that is involved in that, we disqualify the player.”
Asked what happens if she is notified that lesbianism is happening at a particular club she says: “We have to call the attention of the chairman, we can’t go and start controlling people’s clubs. Everybody is controlling his or her club. When we hear it, because we don’t condone it, we have to call the attention of the people who are running that club, to make sure that they warn the people or do something to people to stop it, because we don’t tolerate it in our League.”
Activists had already reacted with fury to media reports that Dilichukwu Onyedinma had pledged to ban lesbians from football. On Wednesday, a coalition of French activists, football personalities, academics and politicians including World Cup winner, Lilian Thuram, wrote a letter [http://footforlove.yagg.com/2013/03/07/les-lesbiennes-mises-au-ban-de-lequipe-de-foot-nationale-du-nigeria-reagissons/] to the Nigerian ambassador to France decrying the move of Dilichukwu Onyedinma which they say comes “in a context where the whole of the Nigerian LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender)community is suffering violence and of daily discrimination, whilst the UN Human Rights Council adopted in June 2011 a historic resolution promoting the equality of individuals regardless of their sexual orientation.”
The French group says that “Our struggle for the dignity of Nigerian players and all lesbians in the country is not limited to this letter. We will officially ask to the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) to suspend the participation of Nigeria of all international sporting events.”
They finish their letter quoting Nelson Mandela who said: “A human being who deprives another human being’s freedom is prisoner of hatred, prejudice and narrow-mindedness.”
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