By CHUX OHAI
Most weekends, when the open bar at a popular guest house, situated on Opebi Road in Ikeja, Lagos, is crammed with revellers, dozens of young women in various modes of skimpy dressing line up on both sides of the road in obvious competition for the attention of the men folk.
For these young women, whose ages could be between 18 and 30, the festive atmosphere around the guest house presents an opportunity to engage in prostitution, the infamous and ‘oldest profession’ in the world.
Some of the sex workers, like the pretty, light-skinned Jessica – who walked up to our correspondent in a moment of desperation last Friday – hang out at the fun spot nearly every day. As always, the objective is to make ends meet.
“I need money, bros. If I no make money dis night, dem fit drive me comot for the hotel wey I dey stay,” she says, in Pidgin English.
Like many others, Jessica has to ‘make money’ by selling her body in order to keep body and soul together, as they say. On that Friday night, it was her turn to pay the rent – about N5,000 – for a room she shares with two other girls in a rundown hotel that is situated just off Ogundana Street on Allen Avenue in Ikeja.
In addition to taking care of her other needs, she has to provide financial support to her mother, a poor widow, and her younger siblings back in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Asked why she did not look for a job instead of engaging in prostitution, she says, “Bros, I no go school. Na how I go come see better job? Who go employ me? Even university graduates never see job, not to talk of person wey no get certificate.”
But Jessica is only one out of many women whose continued existence depends on how many men they sleep with. Unfortunately, with the current economic situation in the country, it appears that the number of such people may continue to rise for a while.
Despised by society
Before now, the society frowned deeply on prostitution. Sex workers, generally referred to as ‘ashewo’ in many parts of the country, were openly derided and treated like outcasts. The society kept a close watch on such women to prevent the ‘contagion’ they carried from spreading to the rest of the community. Again, many parents and guardians, eager to preserve the moral integrity of their children and wards, forbade them to get close to these women.
“Prostitutes were so few in those days that we could actually count them on the tips of our fingers. When I was a little boy growing up in Benin City, the adults would point to the home of a prostitute from a distance and warn us not to go there. Sex workers were not only despised, many families openly avoided contact with them,” says Jeremiah Osagie.
But that was many years ago, when society still retained most of its moral values and the crime rate was very low. Nowadays, the picture is completely different. Sex workers are no longer the timid social outcasts that they used to be.
Driven by a desire to survive the excruciating economic situation in the country, they have literally come out of their emotional shells and out of the so-called ‘red-light’ districts, where society previously consigned them, to operate in public places.
‘Money for hand, back for ground’
Investigation shows that for every woman involved in the illicit sex trade in Nigeria, the guiding slogan, as expressed locally (in Pidgin English), is ‘Money for hand, back for ground’. This is a sacred rule that every sex worker worth her salt is expected to obey in order to survive the hard times.
“If no be money, na wetin I go dey find for street every night?” Jessica asks. Then, in a tone that betrayed her desperation, she boasts that she is ready to do anything, short of committing murder, for money.
The charges for sex varies, depending on the client and the weight of his purse, range from N5,000 for “short time” to N25,000 for a one-night stand. If the “hooker” is lucky to land a wealthy client, the chances are that she may end up going home with a heavier purse than she expected.
For the sake of money and the good things it can buy, sex workers have taken to hustling on the streets of the major cities, particularly Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja, for clients.
In order to evade contact with law enforcement agents and avoid arrests, especially in the Federal Capital Territory and other parts of the country where there is a vigorous campaign against prostitution, some of them have resorted to plying their trade in daylight rather than at night.
Others hang out in popular bars, busy beer parlours and nightclubs where the prospect of attracting a client, who is willing to shell out good money for a round of sex or more, is real.
In some of these busy fun spots, our correspondent found out, pimps make their services available to guests who are too shy to openly approach a girl for a one-night stand.
Also, prostitutes operate in some hotels with the active connivance of some of their workers. Sometimes, after carefully sizing up a male lodger who has just arrived, the hotel worker may quietly ask him if he needs a girl to keep him company. If the guest’s response is positive, he will be shown a photo album containing pictures of young women of different sizes and shapes to choose from.
After the guest has made his choice, the intermediary then calls the sex worker on the telephone and invites her to the hotel. Of course, the sealing of the deal is without the knowledge of outsiders, just as all the parties involved benefit from it.
sex trade in NigeriaSometimes, a group of sex workers may decide to pool resources together and rent a private apartment, which they may eventually convert to their operational base. But, many landlords are not always favourably disposed to such an arrangement because of the noise and distractions that it attracts, as well as the fear of attacks by armed robbers.
‘Runs girls’ on campus
Although nobody seems to know exactly how it started, it is no longer news that prostitution has found a foothold in many of the nation’s universities. On campuses across the country, female students who indulge in this illicit trade are known as ‘runs girls’. It is not difficult to spot them in a crowd. They are usually the flashy types, often dressed ‘to kill’ in designer clothes and shoes. One could tell from their expensive handbags and perfumes, the latest smart phones they carry and high quality weaves on their hair that they are several miles apart, at least in economic terms, from the average female undergraduate. Quite a number of them can also be found cruising on campuses in luxury cars.
“Three out of every five female students on campus won’t mind doing one or two ‘runs’ to get what they need,” a 300-level undergraduate of the University of Lagos, known as Timi, tells our correspondent.
Asked how he arrived at the figures, he replies, “I am part of the game, oga. I know what I am saying. Some of these girls are not doing it because of poverty. It is not true. I know a few who are from rich families. Some girls are just doing it for fun. Others want to be seen as ‘happening’ girls on campus and they are doing ‘runs’ because their friends are involved.”
Investigation shows that campus prostitutes operate through intermediaries (often male students). These pimps usually approach potential clients with photo albums containing the pictures of the sex workers. The clients or ‘aristos’, as they are called, in turn choose the girls they would like to sleep with for the night at an agreed price.
Nowadays the girls do not have to wait to be picked up by a client from their respective hostels. According to Timi, some weekends, they leave the campus in groups to hunt for clients, in buses provided by some nightclubs operating in different parts of the city or by individuals throwing a big party somewhere.
When the girls arrive at their destinations, they are expected to hook up with clients and make some money. This time, they are left on their own and the pimps, who must have arranged the trips, in the first place, are no longer in the picture.
One common feature among campus sex workers is that they bond together most of the time – a practice that gives room to the notion that many of them were lured into the obnoxious trade through peer pressure.
The strip club angle
Although strip clubs – night clubs where guests pay to watch women dance nude – may have added value to the quality of night life in some urban areas, their existence, no doubt, has given rise to another dimension in the sex trade. For example, during a recent visit to a popular strip bar on Opebi Road in Ikeja, Lagos, our correspondent observed that while the majority of the guests were paying attention to the erotic gyrations of a dancer on stage, a few others were busy having sex with some of the girls in an adjoining room.
“Sometimes the sex is unprotected and spontaneous. I guess the girls involved are much more interested in the money than to bother about protecting themselves from STDs,” says a customer, who simply gave his name as Joe.
According to Joe, the guests are mostly men in their prime, businessmen, politicians and more, all of them have one goal: to catch some fun and to fulfil their sexual fantasies, even if they have to part with some money.
Sex on the Internet
Emboldened by the changing times and changes in technology, sex workers on this side of the globe have devised newer sophisticated ways to carry out their trade. One interesting dimension of this development is that they now attempt to reach out to potential clients through the Internet.
Finding shows that increased access to the Internet has given more sex workers the opportunity to advertise their ‘services’ online, mostly by posting erotic pictures of themselves, to attract patronage. Sometimes, they leave their email addresses and in some more daring cases, their telephone numbers for interested men who are willing to contact them or ‘book’ ahead.
In other parts of the world, prostitutes and their agents have appropriated the Internet as a marketing tool. The same goes for sex workers in this part of the world.
Some of the most popular social media platforms where Internet-savvy Nigerian sex workers advertise their ‘wares’ and meet potential clients are Facebook, Badoo, Eskimi and Twitter. To make contact with any of the scarlet ladies, an interested individual is required to open an account on any of the platforms, state the type of relationship he wants and choose from an array of female subscribers whose are posted on the site.
Flashes of organised activism
Another indication that prostitution has assumed a newer dimension and sex workers have become bolder and more sophisticated in their activities emerged recently when a group of women allegedly led by one Patoo Abraham took to the streets in Lagos to protest discrimination against prostitutes.
The women, who wore white tee-shirts emblazoned with the slogan ‘Sex work is work. We need our rights’, called for the legalisation of prostitution in the country. Arguing that prostitution was not peculiar to Nigeria and that it was openly practised in other parts of the world, Abraham also protested the continued stigmatisation of sex workers in the country.
Also, early in August, 2015, a group of sex workers protested the killing of their colleague by alleged ritual murderers in Abeokuta, Ogun State. The hookers, who were dressed in black clothes, held a candle-lit march to the state secretariat of the Nigerian Union of Journalists to register their grievance.
The incident and the emergence of groups, such as the Abraham-led Nigerian Chapter of African Sex Workers Alliance and the National Association of Nigerian Prostitutes, show how commercial sex workers in the country are eager about organising themselves into pressure groups and how much they are determined to press for their rights within a society that hardly recognises their existence.
During the last general election, some sex workers acting under the aegis of the NANP reportedly declared their support for the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. Led by one Jessica Elvis, the group promised to declare free sex nationwide if Buhari emerged president.
War against prostitution
On August 8, 2012, a Special Offences Court sentenced about 32 commercial sex workers arrested by operatives of the Lagos State Taskforce on Environmental and Special Offences (Enforcement) Unit for loitering at midnight on Toyin Roundabout and Isaac John Street in Ikeja to four months imprisonment.
According to reports, the sex workers were found guilty of engaging in “acts inimical to public peace and safety”. They were convicted on a three-count charge. But all were sentenced to two months imprisonment without an option of fine on the first count.
A few days later, officials of the Nigeria Immigration Service reportedly arrested 13 teenage Asian prostitutes during a raid on their base on Emina Crescent, off Toyin Street in Ikeja, Lagos. The girls were reportedly brought into the country by a couple, believed to be on the run ever since it was discovered they ran a prostitution racket in Lagos.
Also, last September, a Magistrate’s Court in Ikeja, Lagos, sentenced 30 women arrested by law enforcement agents in the state to six weeks imprisonment each, with an option of N10,000 fine, for engaging in prostitution and breach of the peace. The names of the accused were also made public.
No clear legislation on prostitution – Agbaje
Prominent Lagos-based lawyer, Fred Agbaje, has attributed the rise in prostitution across the country to the absence of a well-defined legislation against it.
Agbaje, in an interview with our correspondent, said that sex workers seemed to be untouchable in the country because of some technical deficiencies within the provisions of the law.
He said, “Although there are provisions in the law, especially under the Administration of Criminal Justice laws of Lagos State that outlaw prostitution, it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the law to successfully address the issue of prostitution.”
Blaming the rise of prostitution on failure of the government and social institutions to address its prevalence in the society, Agbaje said the absence on case laws on prostitution had made it difficult to successfully deal with the social cankerworm.
According to him, the best any prosecutor can get in the court is to convict a sex worker for loitering.
Agbaje concluded, “One of the reasons why nobody has been prosecuted for prostitution is because there must be a witness who will corroborate the claims of the police that a suspect was actually found to be engaging in the act of prostitution. Such charges are always very difficult to prove in a court.”
(Punch)
