A 35-year-old man, named Hashiru Usman, has been sentenced to 9 months imprisonment by a court in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.

Usman was sentenced midweek after he had pleaded guilty having gay sex with what the Nigerian media termed ‘a boy’, although activists have the challenged the manner the use of the reports’ wordings.

The prosecutor, Mukadas Maiyaki told the court that on April 4, Usman picked up the ‘boy’ at Zuma Rock and ‘forcefully’ had anal sex with him.

He told the court that Usman, after having sex with him, he dropped him off at pickup spot.

The prosecutor said that when Usman came back at later date to pick another ‘boy’ from the same place he was apprehended by the police, following the ‘boy’s complaint to security agents.

In his judgement, the presiding judge, Alhassan Kusherki, convicted him on the one-count charge of ‘unnatural offence’, without an option of fine.

The judge stated: ‘I will not grant you an option of fine because you do not deserve it.

‘You only carry the face of a human being but your behaviors are equivalent to those of animals because it is only animals that have sexual copulation through the anus.

‘After you have ruin your own life by engaging in such disgusting act, you decided it was not enough for you.

‘So you have to ruin the lives of innocent children by abusing and molesting them. It is my utmost hope that you will become a better person at the end of your jail term’.

Nigerian LGBT rights advocates have, however, slammed the country’s media for creating a moral panic and deliberately conflating gay sex with pedophilia.

Commenting on the reports, Adebisi Alimi, told Gay Star News: ‘In the past few days I have seen an increase in the number of reported cases of homosexuality in the Nigerian media, leading to police arrest and/or criminal charges.

‘However something that is baffling is the use of the word "boy"; The media kept using the "noun" over and over again as the benchmark for the age of the victim and thereby creating an atmosphere of "pedophiliac" epidemic through the act of homosexual sex.

‘Yet in all cases the real age of the "boy" is not disclosed, so we do not know if the person is above the age of consent.

‘The use of the word “boy” is designed to incite hatred, anger and resentment, a subtle anti-gay propaganda of the press to cause more harm to an already vulnerable population.

‘The media is systematically fueling hatred by misreporting the case, while the judiciary is more than happy to collaborate and constantly promoting religion and morality rather than upholding human rights.

‘This a gross abuse of the fundamental human rights of LGBT people in Nigeria’.