Bisi Alimi - Overcoming "Activist Guilt"

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Jan 29, 2018
by Nicole Bogart
Bisi Alimi - Overcoming "Activist Guilt"

British-Nigerian LGBT activist and vlogger discusses his experience with "activist guilt"

Bisi Alimi has certainly earned the title of social activist. Not only is he the founder and director of the Bisi Alimi Foundation, which “advocates for the rights and dignity of LGBT people in Nigeria by addressing public opinion and accelerating social acceptance,” he is also the first Nigerian to come out on national television, and is a prolific social media personality (his TEDx Talk “There Should Never Be Another Ibrahim” has been listed as one of the most inspiring queer TED Talks of all time). But Alimi admits his journey is not entirely comprised of celebration.

Alimi, originally from Nigeria, moved to the UK in 2007 as a refugee, at the peak of his activism. Just two years prior he, along with a group of friends, started the Independent Project for Equal Rights. Forced to leave Nigeria, Alimi found himself struggling to manage the demands of his activism from abroad.
“I got to the UK in April [and] by December I had lost it,” he says. “I remember many nights I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I was crying. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed.” After seeking help for his depression, Alimi says it was a psychiatrist who helped him realize he was suffering from what many activists refer to as “activist guilt.”

“[She told me] I had to see the UK as home, and I had to start accepting the fact that I can still contribute to what is going on in Nigeria. It was very personal to me. I was angry at myself; I was angry at everyone. But she helped me to get to a position to say, ‘It’s ok,’” he says. “Now, when activists come to me with this guilt, I tell them my story and say, ‘Let nothing stop you.’ It’s just a matter of borders and geography; we live in a global world now and you can still have the same impact.”

The fifth session of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum centered around the theme of “Home” and took a detailed look at the lives of LGBT refugees and their journey to redefine their sense of belonging and home. Alimi, who has now lived in the UK for ten years, explains that migration forced him to redefine the concept of family. “It meant that I had to discover and develop a new form of family. It means a lot to me; the process of finding people that I can call father, mother, brother. When I find them it goes deep into my soul.”

Family for Alimi now includes his husband, whom he married in November 2016. “For me – that little boy from Nigeria who lived in a country where just thinking about the idea of wanting to get married could land you in jail for 14 years – just having that experience of looking into the eyes of this gorgeous man and saying ‘I do’ was like living in a fairytale.”

Alimi’s birth family, whom he says rejected him from childhood, did not attend the wedding, nor have they acknowledged their son’s marital status. “It was the only dark spot on my joy,” he says.

Yet the activist, a first time Fellow of the Forum, says he has now welcomed many of his fellow participants into this ever-evolving family of choice, speaking of the energy the Forum has fueled inside of him.

“It was such a huge honor that I could not [have] imagined I would be part of this,” he says. “The films that are shown here, the stories of how people are changing generations in their country – it’s very inspiring to me. I know that I am going to go home and do something completely different.”


Bisi Alimi on the guilt activists feel after leaving their home country