About Us
Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation
QUEST9JA
WHO WE ARE
The Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation (QUEST9ja) is a revolutionary queer collective in Nigeria dedicated to queer liberation. We are an abolitionist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and pan-Africanist group of radical queer Nigerians who are fighting for economic and social justice. We are organizing to end all discriminatory laws that affect queer people in Nigeria and to halt the continuing deterioration of Nigeria into a queerphobic neo-fascist police state.
We want a transformed society free of police violence, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, classes & all other forms of state violence.
We believe that through dismantling all forms of societal oppression, we will be able to wrest Nigeria from the economic forces that are tearing it apart and fashion it into a truly equitable and just society where everyone is free from oppression. Understanding that oppression is systemic, we favour a wholesale replacement of the current capitalist sociopolitical system because that is what it would take to achieve the full and permanent liberation of queer people.
We are organizing towards building dual power for queer people to counteract this violence in the short term, while also organizing to completely dismantle it as a long-term goal. This dual power is aimed at creating safety for ourselves including through the creation of mutual aid, healthcare support, housing support, educational support and political education to combat reactionary worldviews which are rampant within the Nigerian working class.
OUR VALUES
QUEST9ja is an abolitionist, anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist union committed to socialist revolution. Our members are committed to the overthrow of capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy in Nigeria as the way of achieving queer liberation. We believe that tools of the carceral state, such as the police and Nigeria’s inhumane prison system are vestiges of colonial violence and that they do not protect us. All they do is implement state violence, enforce cisheteropatriarchy and protect the ruling elites and their economic interests. We believe the less power they have; the safer we will be as a community. We are connected to our African queer siblings through common struggle, not only within ECOWAS states but throughout the continent and globally. Black lives matter, and the devaluation of black lives is tied so strongly to the devaluation of queer lives across the globe.
We oppose imperialism as it entrenches capitalist exploitation, robs us of political agency and engenders environmental destruction in our communities, especially in the Niger Delta. We believe that queer liberation is itself an act of decolonization and an undoing of centuries of imperialist harm, including those committed in collaboration with the Nigerian elites since political independence.
We deplore classism, misogyny, ethnocentric nationalism, ableism and other reactionaryworldviews that endanger marginalized people and harm community building.
Our Party People