The police are investigating the death of a Nigerian transgender TikToker known as \u201cAbuja Area Mama\u201d.<\/p>\n
The battered and bruised body of a 33-year-old transgender woman was found on a road in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday, according to local media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Abuja Area Mama has had a loyal fan base on social media, where she has posted about being transgender and life as a sex worker.<\/span><\/p>\n She never used her full name, sometimes referring to herself\u00a0 as Ifeanyi.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nigeria is a deeply conservative society and people who fall outside the norm are often targeted. Last year, the TikToker shared how she was attacked and feared for her life.<\/span><\/p>\n Same-sex relationships are prohibited in Africa’s most populous country, and many LGBTQ+ Nigerians live in fear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nigerian TikTokers perceived as gay have also been subjected to homophobic abuse online.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In her latest Instagram post on\u00a0 Wednesday, the Abuja Area Mama had said she was ready to go and meet her boyfriend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her body was found hours later along the Katampe \u2013 Mabushi expressway, Banex, Wuse II area of \u200b\u200bAbuja, in what is suspected to be a murder case.<\/span><\/p>\n According to a statement from the police, a team of detectives visited the scene Thursday morning and “preliminary investigations revealed that the individual was a man fully dressed in female clothing with no means of identification on him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Abuja police boss, Benneth Igweh, has since ordered a “thorough and discreet” investigation into the death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Last September, the TikToker said that she was stabbed by an unidentified person under uncertain circumstances.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On her TikTok profile, she describes herself as “Abuja’s number one crossdresser and queen of the streets”.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She said her posts were meant to be a reflection of her life and to educate her followers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The news of her death caused an outpouring of grief on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n Although Nigerian laws guarantee freedom from discrimination and the right to privacy and family life, mass arrests and detentions of people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community are common, especially in the states of the north.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Taking laws into your hand because you don’t like another person’s sexual orientation is the worst form of inhumanity,” Martins Ifijeh, a local journalist, posted on X.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC News\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The police are investigating the death of a Nigerian transgender TikToker known as \u201cAbuja Area Mama\u201d. The battered and bruised body of a 33-year-old transgender woman was found on a road in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday, according to local media.\u00a0 The Abuja Area Mama has had a loyal fan base on social media, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}