By Bernard Otu Assim-ita | Senior Communication and Advocacy Manager
Earlier this year, a young person called our emergency helpline from a city far from home. They had been outed to their family, asked to leave, and had spent two nights moving between friends' floors before someone directed them to our social media platform. By the time they reached us, they had not eaten a full meal in three days. Within 48 hours, our team had arranged safe housing, connected them with legal support, and made sure they had food, a phone, and someone checking them daily.
We do not share this story to perform crisis. We share it because it is not exceptional. It is Saturday but yet, it is the kind of call our team receives regularly, and it is the clearest picture of why this organisation exists and why the work cannot stop.
The Ground We Are Holding
In Nigeria, the operating environment for LGBTQ+ people remains one of the most constrained on the continent. Internationally, funding for LGBTQ+ programming is contracting sharply as political winds shift in major donor countries. The combination of those two realities means that organisations like TIERs are being asked to do more with less, at precisely the moment when more is needed. We want you to understand that context because it shapes everything you are about to read.
Keeping the Helpline On
Our emergency response helpline remained open every hour of every day through the first quarter of 2026. Our team managed incoming cases of blackmail, sexual assault, wrongful arrest, and family-based violence. For each case, the response involved a combination of legal counsel, emergency fund disbursement, safe house coordination, and sustained welfare follow-up. For some individuals, this meant facilitating urgent relocation entirely. In 2025 alone we documented over 91 cases of human rights violations. That number does not capture the calls that were resolved quietly, the crises averted before they escalated, or the people who simply needed to hear a calm voice on the other end of the line.
We are also actively progressing a landmark legal case under Nigeria's Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, working alongside legal partners to bring a challenge that has taken months of careful preparation to the point of filing. Whatever the outcome, the act of pursuing it matters. It says, clearly, that the law can be questioned.
Healthcare in a Hostile Climate
When international funding rollbacks began affecting HIV service delivery in Nigeria in 2025, TIERs moved quickly. We secured a donation of 819 antiretroviral units through Aurobindo via Phillips Pharmaceutical, closing a gap that could have left people without medication. That instinct, to find a way when the system fails the people depending on it, continues to define how our health team operates.
This quarter, under our ViiV Healthcare project, we held live rights-holder sessions bringing together people living with HIV and other key population community members to understand their rights within healthcare settings. IEC materials on stigma reduction were revised following feedback from the National Agency for the Control of AIDS and are being prepared for distribution across health facilities. We also engaged with NACA on the rollout of Lenacapavir, a long-acting injectable HIV prevention option, to ensure that conversations about access include the communities most affected.
Our sexual health and wellness clinic took two significant steps forward. We received our provisional HEFAMAA 2026 certificate, moving closer to full accreditation, and successfully procured a clinic examination bed that had long been outstanding. Our Electronic Medical Records migration is actively underway, with 149 active ART clients now uploaded and PrEP client data in progress. These are not administrative details. They are the infrastructure that makes dignified, consistent care possible.
Under the IPAS project, our team continued running community sessions with LBQ women across Lagos, creating space for honest conversation about sexual and reproductive health and rights in environments where those conversations are rarely safe to have.
Advocacy That Moves at the Speed of Events
When developments affecting LGBTQ+ people in Senegal made regional headlines in March, TIERs responded with public advocacy within hours. We framed the moment not just as a Senegalese story but as a regional one, connecting it directly to the pressures Nigerian LGBTQ+ people face and the importance of cross-border solidarity. The response from our community online was some of the strongest engagement we have seen this year. It reinforced something we already believe: when queer Africans see themselves reflected in our communications, they show up.
Building Culture, Not Just Crisis Response
One of the things we want donors to understand about TIERs is that we are not only a crisis organisation. We are also a culture-building one, because culture is where long-term change lives.
Q Convos Season 3 is in production. This is our flagship conversation series that brings together queer voices on topics ranging from mental health to pop culture to sexuality and identity. The host is contracted, shoot dates have been locked in, and batch recording is underway. For a community that is often rendered invisible in Nigerian media, having a platform that says your stories matter and your conversations deserve an audience is not a small thing.
Rant with Tellah, our monthly Twitter Space series, has been running consistently since February 2025. We have reached a peak of 185 listeners in a single session, with an average audience of between 70 and 90 people per episode. Those numbers may look modest in global terms. In the context of queer community building in Nigeria, they represent genuine trust.
And then there is She, He, They. Nigeria's first web series centered entirely on queer characters and their daily realities. In September 2025, the series won the Inclusive Lens Award at Fame Week Africa. It has shown what is possible when queer stories are told without apology, on their own terms, by people who understand them from the inside. It continues to be a reference point for what TIERs stands for beyond the helpline.
A New Way to Stay Close to the Work
At the close of Q1 2026, we launched our community newsletter. It is designed to bridge the distance between our institutional work and the people who care about it, bringing stories, updates, and calls to action directly to inboxes in a format that feels personal rather than corporate. We are building it deliberately and we think you will want to be part of where it goes.
Pride 2026: Open Doors
This year's Pride Month carries a specific weight. Funding pressures, political hostility, and the compounding economic hardship many community members are navigating have made 2026 a harder year than most. And yet Pride is coming, and our community will be present for it.
Under the theme Open Doors, TIERs is planning a programme that holds two things at once: the full, defiant celebration of queer joy through events, a webinar, a premiere, and a podcast rollout, and an economic relief drive that puts material support directly into the hands of community members who are struggling. Because joy without material safety is incomplete, and relief without dignity is not relief at all. We are building both.
We are also planning the second edition of the Our African Family, Culture and Values Conference, which brought together scholars, advocates, and community members in 2025 to reframe African identity through an inclusive and decolonial lens. Alongside this, we are working toward activating a Sexual Assault Referral Centre, expanding the practical support available to survivors in our community.
What We Need From You
If you have read this far, you already understand the stakes. The work described in this update is real, it is ongoing, and it is underfunded. Every contribution made through this page goes directly toward keeping the helpline staffed, the clinic running, the legal support funded, and the cultural work alive.
If you are giving for the first time, welcome. If you are giving again, thank you for not looking away. And if you cannot give right now, please share this update with someone who can.
Our community's survival has never been more urgent. Our commitment to showing up for it has never been stronger.
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By Bolaji Oyindamola | Senior Program Officer (Advocacy and Comms)
By Bolaji Oyindamola | Senior Program Officer (advocacy and Comms)
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