Controversial Nigerian transgender TikToker found dead

Nigerian police are investigating the death of a controversial Nigerian transgender TikToker known as “Abuja Area Mama”.

The beaten and bruised body of the 33-year-old transgender woman was found along a highway in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday, local media reported.

Abuja Area Mama had a loyal fan base on social media, where she posted about being transgender and her life as a sex worker. She never used her full name, referring to herself sometimes as Ifeanyi.

Nigeria is a deeply conservative society and people who step outside the norms are often targeted. Last year the TikToker told of how she had been attacked and feared for her life.

Same-sex relationships are criminalised in Africa’s most-populous nation and many LGBTQ+ Nigerians live in fear.

Nigerian TikTokers who are perceived to gay have also become the target of homophobic abuse online.

In her last post on Instagram on Wednesday, Abuja Area Mama had said she was getting ready to go and see her boyfriend.

Hours later, her body was found along Katampe - Mabushi expressway in the Banex, Wuse II area of Abuja, in what is suspected to be a murder incident.

A team of detectives visited the scene on Thursday morning and “preliminary investigations revealed that the individual was a man fully dressed in female clothing with no means of identification on him”, a police statement said.

Abuja police chief Benneth Igweh has since ordered a "thorough and discreet” investigation into the death.

Last September, the TikToker said she had been stabbed by an unidentified person in what were unclear circumstances.

On her TikTok profile, she described herself as “the number one Abuja cross-dresser and queen of the street”.

She said her posts were intended to be a reflection of her life and educate her followers.

The news of her death has sparked an outpouring of grief on social media.

Even though Nigeria's laws guarantee freedom from discrimination and the right to private and family life, mass arrests and detention of those in the LGBTQ+ community are common - especially in northern states.

"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.