Thirty-five-year
old Patience (not her real name) was a trader at Uselu Market, Benin
City, Edo State, before it caught fire last December. With a huge debt
of almost N1 million, she ran away to Ilorin, the Kwara State capital,
in an attempt to escape from her creditor ? only to end up in Honeymoon
Hotel, where she makes between N2,000 and N5000 daily from commercial
sex.
Sitting dejectedly,
she was weeping profusely over a recent diagnosis of HIV/AIDS at the
Ilorin Civil Servants Clinic. Patience agreed to talk to NEXT only
after much persuasion. She described her life as a programme outside
God’s purpose.
“Wetin come be my
own? Plenty people wey I meet never get dat kind thing. I just dey here
some time come get AIDS,” she said in pidgin English.
Patience’s friend,
whom she identified as a Camerounian, had told her that the place
(Ilorin) was the best for the business, as few people would ever
suspect what was going on.
Just like the young
woman from Benin, many other girls have left their homes to sojourn in
Ilorin and ride the night for fun. Some of them are university students
who have dropped out and are afraid to reveal their plight to their
parents, thereby ending up in the trade due to peer influence.
The hots pots
Ariya and Alaafia
Hotels on Coca-Cola Road are amongst so many other rendezvous in the
state capital, where the rich and influential troop to pick them up,
and then to some of the biggest and well patronised hotels. According
to Patience, the girls in the business have associations and always
contribute money to bribe the police and government officials, so that
they would not be disturbed. Their rates start from N3000, depending on
the look of the customer or time of the night.
Mide Yusuf and
Matar Peter who had allegedly absconded from their Lagos parents on the
pretext that they were students of Kwara State Polytechnic told NEXT
that they each made an average of N30,000 monthly, a greater portion of
which goes into beautification as well as wardrobe and accessories.
On her first night
encounter with NEXT, Ms Yusuf said, “If you can pay four thousand
(naira), I will manage it, and you will first buy me Indomie before we
go.” When she was assured of a bottle of drink with the noodles if she
would be willing to just discuss her life, Ms Yusuf, who also solicits
for customers on Facebook, said “I don’t know why you want to know all
these things, but, first I want you to know that I am just a visitor
here. I don’t always come here. I am here today because I will have to
pay my caretaker tomorrow. Though I am an indigene of Ilorin, but I
grew up in Iyana-Ipaja, Lagos. My mum is no more with my dad and she
already has four children for another man.
“My brother, a
soldier at the barracks, brought me and my elder brother here. But my
brother left for Lagos when he finished learning tailoring. Just some
months ago, our elder brother was taken to Maiduguri and I am just here
and need to survive. At least I am not a virgin, so life goes on,” she
said.
At her rented
apartment at Tanke area of Ilorin, Ms Yusuf introduced her friend, Ms
Peter, who had also took off from her home in Lagos. Warning her friend
to desist from “speaking to strangers” about her life, Ms Peter,
however, reluctantly volunteered, also in pidgin English, “Me I go go
back to Lagos now. I just dey here to make small money to get house.”
No more cheating
According to Ms
Peter, her mother spent most her time in Coutonu, Benin Republic, and
left her behind to learn the trade of selling cloths while living with
her trainer, whom she said had already turned her and the other girls
into instruments of making money from men, working as sex slaves.
“If you are in my
shoes, you no go run? I just think say, instead of sleeping with men to
bring business for my oga, then let me do it to make money for myself
and later go and start my own business. Imagine, the day I leave Lagos,
she sent us to Cotonou to bring cloths and whenever we go, instead of
giving us money to clear at the border, she go expect say make we do
anyhow with Customs, you know now. So, I just took the money for bus
wey she give us and run come here,” said Ms Peter.
On the Tuesday
following the national assembly election, a Toyota bus belonging to
Kwara State University was sighted at a night bar that operates within
the premises of the state ministry of tourism. The old man driving the
bus had come to pick about 20 girls, who filled the bus, chattering
about what they had already made on short-time sex services.
“It is either the
man brought them from school and has come back for them or he is
engaged in the usual arrangement of girls for government visitors,”
said a suya (barbecue) seller in the vicinity.
The Government
Reservation Area (GRA) section of the city where the girls hang out for
business has been nicknamed Contractor. Now highly popular, the tag is
from the buzz of the motorcycle riders and hotel attendants who always
come around to “arrange” girls for business. Also in the area are to be
found many guest houses, hotels and inns where “short time service”
could be rendered at a rate ranging from N1000 to N2000.
Speaking to NEXT,
Tom Akpor, a taxi driver plying the Contractor route, said: “Most of
the girls are just students, though some of them are not in school. If
you maintain that it is student that you want, I know them very well,”
he said.
Challenging Mr
Akpor on how he would feel if he found his sister among the night
queens, he retorted: “I know wetin she dey do where she dey?” The
father of two who revealed that his wife did not know that he was
there, said that he was only helping the girls and not doing anything
wrong.
However, unlike most of her colleagues, Patience’s few months into
the business got her into trouble, as she now has to battle a
much-dreaded health condition – HIV/AIDS. According to her, she had met
men who took her to an hotel, induced and gang-raped her, only for her
to be woken up in the middle of the day by the hotel staff.
