Forbidden sexuality in Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 contentious sexual space

There is a sense in which we can speak of two levels of dominant and peripheral sexual spaces within the Nigerian discourse of sexuality. The dominant space deals with the generally acceptable sexual orientation that essentially draws its legitimacy from the biological configuration of sexuality within the African temper of mind. It lays claim, at one level, to the public/cultural sexual space and, at another level, to the private sexual space which also, presumably, directly follows from the cultural sexual course. On the other hand, the peripheral sexual space is seen, to put it in Guarav Desai phrase, as “any nonnormative sexual practices” (2007, p. 736). This marginal sexual orientation has perhaps largely operated within the level of private sexual space, but now it seeks to renegotiate the Nigerian cultural/public sexual space. It is this attempt to renegotiate the dominant cultural/public sexual space that seems to have raised the tension within the discourse of sexuality in Nigeria in recent times leading to the legislation that out-rightly criminalises alternative sexuality in Nigeria. It is this contentious sexual orientation within the African consciousness; its presumed origin, violence and politics of practice that forms the focus of Kunle Afolayan’s film, October 1. This paper looks at October 1 within the contentious discourse of that which is seen as a forbidden sexuality, its attendant violence and destruction in relation to the fluidity and the shifting bases of African cultural orientation in the face of individualism and fundamental human right.