THE Nigerian Police Force (NPF) has said it could not arrest cross-dressers in the country because there were no laws to prosecute them.

Speaking on Channels TV on April 2, the Force public relations officer, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, noted that cross-dressers couldn’t be arrested because cross-dressing remained a very tricky situation and was not yet a punishable offence in Nigeria.

He added that there must be credible evidence before anyone can be charged by the law court.

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“There are some cases that are always very difficult to prove. I’m not ruling out that we have many of them. Let us be reasonable. You can’t have someone you want to prosecute without having credible evidence against them. I have not read anywhere where cross-dressing is an offence in Nigeria.

“Some of them that are into crossdressing, the allegation is that they are into something else. That’s where the problem lies. We need to have enough proof, credible evidence to prove that they are actually into that. All those offences are natural offences in Nigeria, and they are punishable under our laws”, he said.

Adejobi’s position came after the uproar by Nigerians on social media in the past week when a Nigerian cross-dresser, Idris Olarenwaju, known as Bobrisky, was honoured with the award of ‘Best Dressed Female’ at a movie premiere.

The ICIR reports that no federal law in Nigeria specifically addresses cross-dressing because of the enshrinement of the freedom awarded to citizens in the Constitution.

In 2022, the National Assembly proposed a bill seeking to amend the 2013 Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act to criminalise cross-dressing. The bill failed to pass the second reading in the House of Representatives following arguments that the bill was unconstitutional and did not reflect Nigeria’s diverse culture.