GENDER FLUIDITY AND THE REIMAGINATION OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIA.

Abstract

This article examined the emergence of gender fluidity and its implications for identity formation in contemporary Nigeria. Drawing on social constructionist, queer theory, symbolic interactionist and African feminist perspectives, the study explored how individuals who do not conform to binary gender categories negotiate selfhood within socio-cultural environments shaped by patriarchy, religious conservatism and moral regulation. Using qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, digital ethnography, and cultural text analysis, the article investigated how gender-fluid Nigerians construct, perform, conceal and reimagine their identities across physical and digital spaces. The study found out that gender fluidity in Nigeria is not a mere adoption of Western identity categories but a locally situated process shaped by fear, resilience, strategic conformity and creative self-fashioning. Digital platforms emerge as ambivalent sites of both affirmation and intensified surveillance, enabling new forms of self-expression while exposing individuals to moral policing and social sanctions. The article concluded that gender fluidity constituted a form of everyday resistance that destabilises dominant gender ideologies and challenges prevailing notions of personhood, morality and citizenship. By foregrounding lived experiences and contextual meanings, this study recommended African-centred identity scholarship and calls for a reconceptualisation of identity as relational, negotiated and historically situated.