Defining Prostitution

Previous studies have pointed to the definitional problems implicit in attempts to neatly categorize prostitution. ⁴ As Forster has rightly argued, in western societies the definitional space of prostitution is muddled but this becomes even more complicated when attempting to draw up a cross-cultural perspective. The sexual terrain of precolonial Nigeria has been subjected to varied readings in local and colonial imaginaries. Prostitution as the commoditization of sexual services didn’t exist in the local lexicon but there existed several sexual activities that fell outside conjugal relations. For instance, the engagement of women in extra-marital sexual liaisons was permissible and conducted within culturally sanctioned parameters. In Lagos and other Yoruba communities wives could take a lover, who secured her husband’s approval through payment of a fine for encroaching on “his property” and the performance of culturally approved rites. The husband remained the rightful spouse and the children born of such illicit relations belonged to the husband.

Polygamy and concubinage were also widely practised and they increased after 1850. ⁵ From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century the number of male slaves transported across the Atlantic outstripped the number of females who were more in demand domestically. ⁶ By 1800 Lagos had become the principal slave port in West Africa. Its supply of slaves was further increased by Yoruba warfare. ⁷ Given the fact that most young men couldn’t marry because of high bride prices, female slaves acquired great importance for their reproductive and economic roles. Military expeditions took on increased significance as well in the acquisition of slave wives, and this was one avenue for young men who lacked the financial ability to marry freeborn women as marrying a slave wife exempted one from the obligation to pay a bride price. The price of a bride increased from two shillings in the 1890s to about £2 in 1903, and in many cases young men found themselves deeply in debt. Historical accounts illustrate the preponderance of female slaves in the harems of military men. These slaves were often taken as spoils of war, or they were given as gifts or in some cases purchased. It is difficult to determine the difference in price between a slave wife and a bride because of the paucity of data in Yoruba lands. However, its prevalence among the various communities in the area suggests that it did have certain advantages. Aside from their reproductive and economic functions, female slaves also played a role in forging alliances between communities and individuals, and they facilitated the “control of state mechanisms”. ⁸ They were valued objects of exchange and their sexual services were traded by their owners for political and economic power. The servility of female slaves and the control of their masters makes it difficult to define their sexual services as prostitution.

Precolonial sexual practices in Lagos and the local geographical landscape which is now Nigeria suggest that women exercised sexual freedom in terms of non-marital sex. Such sexual liberty was incomprehensible to early European travellers and merchants because it was at odds with Victorian ideals so colonial powers sought to control it. Labelling and representation was one approach to achieving a neat form of categorization for administrative purposes in this regard as well as controlling those who were colonized through knowledge and possession.

It would be erroneous to equate the sexual practices of married women in precolonial Lagos with some form of prostitution. Rather it should stimulate questions about the meanings of such behaviour for the people who engaged in such practices. An important factor here is the dynamics through which such acts occurred and this is related to the traditional Nigerian context, not western notions. In their study of polygamy in South Africa, Delius and Glaser ⁹ argue that marriage in precolonial Africa was less about control of sexuality and more about fertility and labour productivity, and historical accounts of Yoruba society in Nigeria attest to this. ¹⁰ The practice of women marrying other women into the family was one avenue for those who were infertile or had few children. In this way, they could secure a place in the family by having their husbands get married and acquiring the children that were subsequently born.

In their negative readings of the sexual intimacy of the local population, European writers and the colonial state eroticized what was non-erotic and represented as socially deviant what was culturally legitimate. A good example of this can be seen in the way the colonial imaginary saw the baring of women’s breasts as sexual vulgarity and evidence of female lasciviousness. This inappropriate reading and labelling of non-conjugal sexual liaisons in Africa as prostitution has drawn criticism. ¹¹ It has been argued that the agrarian setting in precolonial Africa precluded the independent capital accumulation of women. More importantly, certain salient features of prostitution such as the indiscriminate sale of sexual services were lacking in the precolonial environment. The relevance of these factors should not be overlooked in the creation of definitions of prostitution for that era, and the origins of prostitution in Nigeria are still unclear. Also, data for the precolonial era is lacking and hence historical explorations of the issue of prostitution remain highly problematic. What is clear is that it was in the colonial period that the prostitute became imprinted in the social imaginary and was subjected to codes of control. ¹² Prostitution became criminalized and the women who earned their livelihood by selling sex were identified and made visible. Colonial narratives discursively produced the prostitute as the female “other” through a motif of degeneracy and a threat to moral order.

State Regulation/Prohibition/Tolerance

With the sustained presence of Europeans in the colonies, sexual prescriptions based on class, race, and gender became increasingly central to the politics of the empire and they were subject to varying degrees of scrutiny by colonial powers. Media publications directed the public’s attention to the rising criminality in Lagos, and this included the “dangers” brought about by young women who engaged in hawking because it was argued that this not only led to prostitution but resulted in them being harassed; in turn, this was linked to prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases amongst European and African military personnel in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, ¹³ which led the colonial government to criminalize prostitution.

The policing of illicit sexuality was subsumed under the Undesirable Advertisement Ordinance of 1932, the Unlicensed Guide (Prohibition) Ordinance of 1941, and the Venereal Disease Ordinance of 1943. ¹⁴ These interjections into female sexual spaces were narratively produced as a state concern for public health and morality by eliminating the sources of such “moral decay” and physical disease. Underlying these concerns were more complex issues concerning modernity and the British role in how that unfolded. The relevant legal documents for stamping out prostitution were mainly enshrined in the Criminal Code of Nigeria of 1916, later amended in 1944, and the Child and Young Person’s Ordinance (cypo) of 1943. The cypo criminalized child prostitution and after being reviewed in 1958, it remained the legal framework relating to child prostitution and other forms of child labour until the promulgation of the Child Rights Acts in 2003.

Sections 222A–222B of the Criminal Code dealt with the procurement, abduction, or encouragement of girls under the age of 16 for the purposes of sold sex; Sections 225 focused on young persons under 18 while Sections 225A criminalized third parties. The definition of prostitution as “the offering by the female of her body commonly for acts of lewdness for payment” created a broad ambiguous space of sexuality that extended beyond women engaged in the sale of sexual services to varying degrees of sexual relations, and it was evidence of a colonial imaginary of local women as sexually gluttonous. Attempts by the colonial state to criminalize prostitution did not go uncontested. Indeed local realities often forced administrators to retrace and reformulate policies. The laws and legislation that were enacted were shaped by these contestations. ¹⁵ State policies and social views about prostitution in the colonial era have strongly influenced postcolonial policies on prostitution. These laws are codified in the Trafficking in Persons Law Enforcement and Administration Act (tip) dating from 2003 and the Child’s Right Act of 2003. The tip, as its name implies, focuses on the elimination of human trafficking. Migrant prostitutes discursively tagged as “victims” are therefore targeted for rescue and rehabilitation while all third parties involved in the “trafficking” process face punitive measures.

Push and Pull Factors

Determining factors for prostitution cannot realistically be said to constitute either/or factors but in most cases involve a complex mix of diverse factors. For many young women in rural areas, prostitution has represented more than a means of livelihood or a survival strategy. As commonly depicted in the literature, it has been seen as a viable means of participating in global consumer culture, in other words “modern urban culture”. This plays an important, albeit unrecognized, part in the mix of push/pull factors. Lagos for female rural migrants has been perceived as a haven of opportunities not just in terms of wage employment (which has been difficult because of inadequate schooling) or marital aspirations but with regards to a loosening of sexual constraints imposed by traditional censors. The multi-cultural landscape of Lagos has led to an increase in the sense of freedom. The only entry requirement into the sex market has been the female body, and this has facilitated the ease of entry for a heterogeneous mix of women. While lived experiences in the city reflect deprivation, social dispossession, and disillusionment with the romanticized image of city life, shame of failure prevents a return home.

In the urban landscape of Lagos in the early twentieth century, reflections of colonial power were visible in colonialist capitalist structures. As the most industrialized city in the area and the biggest employer of wage labour, Lagos attracted many migrants from rural areas and processes of urbanization intensified; the population grew from 38,387 in 1901 to 73,766 in 1911. By 1921, it had increased to 99,700 and ten years later it was 126,000. From 1951 to 1953, there was significant growth and the population surged to 230,250 and when Nigeria proclaimed independence the population of Lagos was 665,246. ¹⁶ The phenomenon of male immigration has been widely noted in the literature as contributing to the growth of prostitution. ¹⁷ The urban landscapes of Lagos have shared the characteristics of mining camps, military settlements, and port cities, common sites of commercial sex. Aderinto has demonstrated how the influx of soldiers and sailors into Lagos spurred on the trade in sex. It was noted that a flourishing sex market existed in those parts of the city that had military encampments such as Ikoyi, Ijora, Surulere, Cumberland, and Yaba. ¹⁸ Prostitutes who catered to the military were known as “ammunition wives”.

World War ii accelerated the selling of sex, particularly among young women in Lagos. The influx of soldiers and European sailors into Lagos during this period sexualized the city, creating a demand for sex that was filled by prostitutes. The incidence of venereal diseases recorded among the troops of the West African Frontier Force (waff) in 1942 was 43.2%, which was higher than cases of malaria. ¹⁹ The war and soldiers’ sexual proclivities caused concerns about the impact of venereal diseases on colonial security forces and the implications that could have for Britain’s racial and moral superiority. This has been explored by Levine in her examination of how colonial policing of prostitution in British colonies, ostensibly to protect the Empire’s troops, was implicated in European imperial designs. ²⁰ From 1967 to 1970, Nigeria was engulfed in a civil war that plunged the country into poverty. For many women, their bodies became weapons of survival, a tool that could be used to negate the effects of war. Women took up the selling of sex for diverse reasons, including access to food and security.

Entry into the sex industry in Lagos was not always voluntary but involved forms of coercion and trafficking, especially in cases of underage girls. Evidence from the 1920s shows that a large number of young girls from rural areas engaged in prostitution in Lagos. ²¹ The sex trade was in many cases mediated by third parties, sometimes with kinship affiliation, and they exploited traditional fostering practices of placing children in the homes of extended family members or reputable households for a moral upbringing. The practice of child marriage meant that child trafficking could be disguised as such. As a resident of Ogoja Providence acknowledged, “the traffic in girls is most popular and more generally admitted to than the traffic in boys for which no legal colour can be found.” ²²

The romanticization of Lagos as a haven of opportunity and the desire to escape the drudgery of agricultural life made girls vulnerable to “traffickers”, but I use the term “traffickers” with caution. While it is true that trafficking did exist, the need for an ordered sexual landscape in the enhancement of European control and the erasure of “tainted femininity” to facilitate the acceptance of local elite women into European spaces likely brought about an overgeneralization of the term. Colonial data does address the coercive nature of child prostitution, which appeared frequently in administrative correspondences, especially from the 1930s onwards. The public imaginary, reflected in newspaper reports and the statements of women’s organizations, condemned the effects of trafficking on children and society’s morality.

There were large numbers of migrant Nigerian prostitutes across the border in the Gold Coast and Equatorial Guinea. The increased visibility of migrant sex workers from Nigeria in the 1930s led Nigerians living in the Gold Coast to feel that their national identity was under threat, and the Nigerian Youth Movement sent a petition to the colonial government protesting the “shame” brought to the country by Nigerian sex workers. Under Gold Coast law, West African prostitutes were allowed to operate in the country and this facilitated the Nigeria-Gold Coast sex trade (Gold Coast Criminal Code Section 435 applied only to non-West African prostitutes). ²³

Attempts made by the colonial state to control prostitutes and their mobility included medical regulation, strengthening immigration controls, and repatriation. Criminalization as a state policy was deployed as a means of tackling the problem of migrant prostitutes. The imaging and imagining of the prostitute were means by which her identity as the “other” was produced. The eroticizing of migrant prostitutes in trafficking narratives as sexually rapacious and morally corrupt was bound up with western cultural imperialism in which the differentiation and hierarchical placement of cultures enabled political and economic dominance. Criminalization continues to be the premise on which legal policies on prostitution in postcolonial Nigeria are based.

Prostitution in Relation to the Labour Market

The sale of sex is not necessarily an exclusive activity and over the years in different parts of the world it has often been engaged in alongside other income-generating activities. In colonial Lagos, these alternate forms of earning an income mostly existed in the informal sector. Studies have shown that most runaway wives, divorcees, and widows combined sex peddling with alternate forms of economic activities, mostly petty trading and hawking. ²⁴ By 1932, the colonial authorities were agitating against the widespread practice of street trading, and it was noted, “There is no street in Lagos or Ebute Metta where hawking or selling outside the houses does not take place.” ²⁵ For younger women, prostitution was a supplement to employment in both the formal and informal sectors. Little reports that there were young women who worked during the day as “seamstresses and in shops and offices […] and dress smartly in European clothes” but they also engaged in prostitution at night by soliciting for clients in bars, clubs, and restaurants visited by members of the upper class, in the process acquiring Europeans and wealthy Africans as patrons. ²⁶ As was the case in other colonial cities, ²⁷ prostitution was closely linked to beer brewing and bar girls traversed the fluid space between catering to male customers in bars and prostitution. As mentioned above, a major concern in colonial times that surfaced in colonial narratives and the popular imaginary was the close link between street hawking by girls and prostitution. The former was seen as facilitating entry into the sex market and indeed police reports and court cases do give credence to the blurred boundaries between the two. ²⁸

It can’t be said that engaging in the commercial sex trade as a full time activity was the norm, and in postcolonial times as well women have continued to combine the sale of sex with other forms of income. In some cases, the income derived from sex work is invested in entrepreneurial activities. The studies of Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta ²⁹ and Margaret Niger-Thomas ³⁰ indicate that in the 1980s prostitutes from Mamfe in Cameroon were engaged in smuggling and cross-border trading in various parts of Nigeria including Lagos, Kaduna, and Calabar. Prostitution as a sole activity does exist, however, among women from lower income groups who sell sex in the slums. In most cases, prostitution is thus a means of survival and the income derived from it is used for daily needs. This group of prostitutes usually lack educational training which further inhibits access to other forms of employment as a supplement to sex work. In contemporary Nigeria, however, the widespread prevalence of cross-border migrant prostitution as well as new globally compliant forms of the sex trade have resulted in a flurry of literature on sex trafficking from a variety of perspectives. ³¹ Low income sex peddlers in Nigerian urban centres on the other hand have continued to receive little attention. One of the few studies in this regard is a socio-medical study of prostitutes in Lagos by Oleru. ³²

Universities and other institutions of higher learning in Nigeria have acquired a reputation as breeding grounds for prostitutes. Termed “runs” in Nigerian parlance, the practice of commercial sex by college girls has become for many of them a means of accessing societal resources and meeting family obligations. The income they earn is often used to set up businesses, in most cases hair salons, bars, and boutiques. Thus for these girls the “runs” trade is carried on alongside their schooling and a benevolent patron establishes some form of capital venture for them, or they use remunerations to take up entrepreneurial activities or “business” in popular terms becomes the second alternate activity to prostitution or “runs”. Media reports have bemoaned the transformation of female dorms and rental residences at the University of Lagos and other such spaces into brothels.

Prostitution as part of the sex industry in Lagos has been linked to an extensive range of activities that integrate lap dancing, striptease, nude dancing, and in recent times internet and live cam sex. Revolutions in technology and communication have impacted the organization of the sex trade, enabling a diversity of indoor sex work. Independent escorts are able to market themselves and solicit for clients on the internet and beyond it.

In Lagos today, strip clubs and nude bars can be found in different parts of the city including Ikeja on the mainland. While live sex acts are not explicitly allowed at the clubs, the dancers are allowed to go an extra mile with vip clients. It is also here that other sexual activities short of penetration are allowed such as oral sex and masturbation. Girls can leave with patrons they like after work hours. Such commercialized sex spaces tend to normalize prostitution. ³³ It is difficult to conclusively pin down popular perceptions about such practices due to a lack of research but fragmentary evidence suggests that lap dancers are less stigmatized than women and girls engaged in selling sex on the streets. The intertwining of such spaces with the corporate industry neutralizes the stigma involved. This was demonstrated with the closure of four strip clubs including Ocean Blue by the Lagos State Environmental Task Force on November 2009. The raids on the clubs elicited mixed reactions but largely criticism for infringement of the rights of the women involved. Going to such clubs was seen as a private affair because it was indoors and consensual. The state legislative body toed the line and the following year the clubs were reopened.

Prostitutes’ Social Profiles

In the colonial period, Lagos had an eclectic mix of prostitutes from different parts of the country. Colonial accounts, however, stated that the majority of women involved were from southern Nigeria, primarily the Cross River region (present day Akwa Ibom Cross River, and some parts of Ebonyi, and Abia States), as well as Owerri Province. ³⁴ Hausa prostitutes were also prominent in the field of commercial sex, but as Aderinto has rightly argued, their geographical confinement to Hausa enclaves in the Sabon Gari and foreigners’ areas such as Agege gave them an invisibility that was not the case with other prostitutes and barred the policing of Hausa prostitutes by the colonial state. ³⁵ Aside from Nigerian prostitutes, there is evidence to suggest that West African prostitutes from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and Dahomey (present-day Republic of Benin) were present in Lagos, but it does not seem that European women were involved in prostitution. ³⁶ By the 1990s, there were prostitutes from other African countries and Asia. The large numbers of wealthy Nigerians and foreigners in the city have created a niche for non-Nigerian prostitutes, mostly from China and African countries. A perusal of the services offered by escort services in Lagos such as Valentine Creamy Escorts shows that there is a diverse mix of women including some from other parts of Africa like South Africa, Ghana, and Benin, as well as Asian and European countries.

The ages of prostitutes constituted a problem for the colonial administration. Undoubtedly the problem of underage girls selling sex had become a social issue by the 1940s and a broad categorization of “child prostitutes” as codified by the colonial government was deemed to be problematic. ³⁷ As Isuigo-Abanike has noted, ³⁸ girls of similar ages were getting married; within the socio-cultural milieu, girls from the age group labelled “underage” were actually of marriageable age and indeed a 15-year-old, according to the Children and Young Person Ordinance, was not a child. The incidence of “child prostitution” was nonetheless fuelled by the demand for young prostitutes by soldiers and sailors, and several brothels on Lagos Island and other places were noted for having young prostitutes, and they were frequented by European sailors. ³⁹ In contemporary Nigeria, there is a discernible trend in the sex industry that demonstrates that there is a higher percentage of sex workers in their twenties; this is the result of several factors including the growing number of women who are marrying later, the sexual emancipation of Nigerian women, and the growing influence of prostitutes’ organizations and activism.

The available data on the age structure of prostitutes in postcolonial Nigeria shows that there is a preponderance of women between the ages of 20 and 30 involved in the sex trade. ⁴⁰ John Lekan Oyefara’s study showed that 89.1 per cent of those surveyed were below 30 years of age while 16.3 per cent were younger than 20. ⁴¹ However, the age of entry, as indicated in studies and media reports, falls within a range of 13 to 15 years of age. The Nigerian anti-trafficking agency (naptip) has reportedly evacuated girls as young as 12 from brothels in the course of sporadic raids. ⁴² Engaging in prostitution is perceived as a transient stage before marriage. This is particularly true for sex workers in Lagos who command a more affluent clientele and are in the 20 to 30 age range. Interviews conducted at the University of Port Harcourt with female students engaged in “runs” show that they do not perceive themselves as prostitutes. That label seems to be reserved for brothel-based and street prostitutes. For them “runs” are part of living the “modern life”, which in their terms incorporates a high life style, adventure, and being financially solvent. As they see it, it is a transitory stage leading towards a sedentary life of marriage. In the course of the fieldwork I conducted for my dissertation, I found that for girls whose preferred clientele are foreigners they hit a goldmine if they get one of their “oyigbo” (white) patrons to marry them. Such a position ensures financial stability for them as well as their families.

In general, kinship networks have been an important part of sex workers’ ability to negotiate the often difficult spaces of commercial sex. Writing in 1972, Kenneth Little demonstrated the importance of ethnic associations in the migration strategies of women in West Africa. ⁴³ These relationships formed the social nexus through which new migrants were able to make sense of the city’s resources. Prostitutes from the Upper Cross River region employed boys of the same ethnic affiliation to act as intermediaries and facilitate access to clients. This reflects the complex relationship between pimps and prostitutes in which the former moved freely between the status of employer/employee. Ethnic associations for the welfare of prostitutes were also formed. As migrants, prostitutes usually stayed with family members or people of the same ethnic group in Lagos.

There is a paucity of data for the colonial period on the children of sex workers in Lagos and whether or not they stayed with their mothers. However, evidence from the Calabar and Ogoja provinces of the Cross River region in southern Nigeria suggests that migrant prostitutes from these communities left their children behind with their families and remittances were sent for their maintenance. ⁴⁴ This trend continued in post-independent Lagos and seemed to be a preferred way for sex migrants at least in the initial stages of migration. It is possible that after obtaining stability in Lagos, children and other dependants may have emigrated as well.

From the late 1980s onwards, the hiv/aids scare has brought the attention of the commercial sex trade to the scholarly community and studies have provided a glimpse into the household strategies of sex workers. Oleru’s study of 150 hotel prostitutes in Lagos shows that 40.7 per cent were married in the 1990s, 70 per cent had previously been married, and 57.8 per cent had their children staying with them. ⁴⁵ In Caldwell’s work, which was premised on a field study conducted in 1990, more than half of the prostitute population under study had children who were being looked after by the sex workers’ mothers in rural areas. ⁴⁶ While about 60 per cent were determined to be single, she points out the likelihood of previously married women self-identifying as single. About a decade later, Oyefara’s research in the Ikeja and Surulere areas of Lagos showed a higher percentage: 73.1 per cent of the women in the sex trade were single while 20.3 per cent were either divorced or separated. ⁴⁷

As regards education, the colonial state and popular narratives suggested that migrant prostitutes were from rural areas, particularly the endemic southern region, and that they were uneducated runaway wives who added to the population of “undesirables” in Lagos. By the 1970s, few prostitutes had secondary educations because such an education would have ensured that they obtained some form of employment. Structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s and the exacerbated economic situation increased unemployment rates and pushed many women, some with secondary school educations, into the sex market. By the late 1980s, migration for prostitution had become a growing trend. Nigerian women began migrating to European countries, particularly Italy, to work as prostitutes. The “success” stories, and the prospect of earning foreign currencies at a time when university professors earned less than N2000, (us$333) pushed educated women into prostitution. Lagos was seen as a training ground for the European sex market. In a 1980 survey of hotel-based prostitutes in Lagos, Oleru found a correlation between prostitutes’ levels of education and health risk and resource management. For example, 60 per cent of those who were selective of the types of clients they accepted had some form of education beyond primary school. Choice of clients was a factor that impacted the women’s’ financial and health status. ⁴⁸

In the twenty-first century, the Lagos sex industry has become highly diversified with different typologies of sex work and practitioners who are heterogeneous not only in terms of working conditions and economic status, but also with regards to education levels. “High-class” prostitutes or sex workers are mostly young women with more than secondary schooling, and they often are attending university or other tertiary institutions like polytechnic schools. The forms of prostitution that exist include escort services, clubbing (soliciting for clients at clubs, bars, and hotels), and in a few cases brothel prostitution. Low education levels would seem to correlate with low incomes and high-risk commercial sexual services. A 2003 survey of “house” (brothel- and hotel-based) prostitutes by Oyefara in Ikeja, the capital city of Lagos, showed that a significant number of prostitutes (39.7 per cent) had a minimum of secondary school education, 12.2 per cent had some form of post-secondary schooling and 12.5 per cent were illiterate. ⁴⁹

Changes in Working Conditions throughout Time and Space

Outdoor prostitution is usually equated with street soliciting and is usually targeted for criminalization because of its high visibility. ⁵⁰ Though a large number of practitioners of outdoor soliciting are either very young or old and have low levels of education, it would be wrong to imagine that there are clear-cut categorizations. University students engage in street soliciting at places that are geographically distant from their places of residence; for example, young women from Port Harcourt engage in street prostitution on the street corners of affluent neighbourhoods in Lagos to avoid stigmatization. Several places in Lagos have gained notoriety for street prostitution. In the 1990s, Ayilara in Ojuelegba on the mainland was discursively produced in the media and popular imaginary as the “hotspot” of prostitutes in Lagos. In the twenty-first century, it has been overtaken by places like Obalende on Lagos Island.

Like other forms of prostitution, indoor prostitution is varied and hierarchical. In Lagos there are women who work with escort services as independent call girls, at strip clubs, and in brothels. Technological developments and the internet have brought about online sex and soliciting. It is common to find younger and more educated women involved in this form of prostitution. University students with their “runs” make up a significant number of this group of sex workers. Closely tied to campus prostitution rings are cults and fraternity groups. Brothels differ in class and type of clientele, ranging from shanty rooms in poor neighbourhoods like Ajegunle and Kango in Alagba Rago market on the Badagry highway; semi-classy brothels are located in places like Ogba, Ikeja and Surulere, and high-end brothels are located on Victoria Island, in Ikoyi, and on Lekki Peninsula. The spatial and socio-economic differentiation of brothels and resident prostitutes is not neatly defined, and as the result of overpopulation in Lagos and the encroachment of slum quarters there are makeshift low-class brothels alongside more affluent ones. A typical example of this are the run-down brothels in Obalende in close proximity to the affluent Ikoyi neighbourhood.

Up until the 1980s, brothels generally housed older prostitutes engaging in survival sex. However, in the late 1980s the increasing number of sex workers who are more educated and the interest of the corporate sector have changed the face of the industry. Not only are education levels increasing but prostitutes have come to include a rather high number of young single women and girls. ⁵¹ Not only are there high-class brothels on the affluent Lekki Peninsula, but young educated women, as well as some working class women, are renting rooms in five-star hotels like the Sheraton Lagos Hotel and Towers and The Federal Palace Hotel to do sex work.

The sex market in Lagos and Nigeria is variegated and complex, involving differences in working conditions, price, and organizational structure that result in hierarchies. At the top of the pyramid are the high-class call girls and escorts whose clientele include the rich and powerful. They are usually young, attractive, and educated, and they solicit at expensive bars, highbrow hotels, parties, public functions, and weddings. In bars the normal practice is to lounge around nursing a drink and when they see a wealthy-looking man or a foreigner they walk up to them and ask, “Do you want company?” In some cases, they give tips to hotel staff members in exchange for information about potential clients. By virtue of the income they earn, their levels of education, and the power of social networking, this category of sex workers feel that they are socially and economically superior to other groups of prostitutes. They perceive themselves as businesswomen rather than prostitutes. This class distinction, enhanced by the cultural acceptance of transactional sex and the cloaking of commoditized sex with semblances of romance and domesticity, ascribes to escorts and call girls a status and acceptability that is denied to others and creates a hierarchy of demand in which they are privileged. Societal perceptions and criminalization/non-criminalization have further impacts on spatial differentiation as high-end sex workers are able to access safer and more comfortable work sites and vice versa.

Occupying the middle category are brothel prostitutes, but they are not an undifferentiated mass group. Some of them belong to the lowest rung of the prostitution hierarchy. At the base of this group are brothels in places like Obalende, a commercial district on Lagos Island next to Ikoyi, and Ayilara in Ojuelegba, a commercial district on the mainland. Ayilara in the 1990s was the most widely known red-light district and clients were drawn from all parts of Lagos. In a report published in 2009, the Vanguard noted that the growth of the trade in Ayilara led some property owners to turn their homes into brothels. The cost of sex in such brothels ranged from N500 to N1000 (about $3 to $6). ⁵² According to the Vanguard the brothels in Obalende were being rented out per hour at a cost of N100, less than a dollar. In brothels located in middle-class neighbourhoods, the residents are more diverse and have varied educational backgrounds including college education. Another Lagos newspaper, pm News, reported that there was a brothel in Iju-Ishaga, one of the middle-class neighbourhoods in the suburbs of Lagos where many of the tenants are girls studying at institutions of higher education. ⁵³ It was reported that rooms were rented for N3000 to N5000 ($18 to $31) for a week and clients were charged from N1000 to N2000 for quick sex, and without a condom the price went up to N2000. All-night sex or what is called tdb (till day break) cost from N3000 to N5000. Prices could go up to N8000 ($49) for a night at brothels where rent was higher.

At the lowest end of the hierarchy are brothels located in slums, and they are usually ramshackle structures with poor ventilation; sold sex at such places is mostly for survival. Examples include dingy brothels located on Empire, a side street near Ojuelegba, an area known for its drug users and miscreants otherwise called “area boys”. Sexual services can be bought for N200, less than $2. Sexual services vary and this impacts the form of remuneration. In one of the strip clubs in Ikeja, formerly known as Ocean Blue, a session of lap dancing (three sound tracks) cost N1000 ($6) and the girls could make up to N20,000 ($122) on a good night. In the vip section which is privately enclosed, the prices are higher, and a session costs N3000 ($18). In most cases sex is sold for monetary payment but in other cases where the woman is engaged in part-time sex work, payment may also include sexual bartering for material goods. From its inscription in Lagos’ urban spaces, prostitution has from the 1990s onwards come to incorporate women and girls who engage in sex work periodically for diverse reasons that extend beyond poverty. There has been a proliferation of new sites of leisure and entertainment imbued with a sense of romance frequented by clandestine prostitutes who, though not subjected to discriminatory laws and policies, exemplify the discourses of prostitution even while not specifically labelled as such. These women offer variegated sexual services that encompass inter-personal elements lacking in brothel and street prostitution. By extending the interactive space beyond the narrow confines of the “sale of sex” to include companionship and hostess activities, it allows for a broadening of the form of payment. In spite of the media outcry about the moral degeneration of college students in Nigeria, there remains a tacit tolerance of such forms of commercial sex, mostly because of its social invisibility and its pervasiveness in society; it extends to the political class on the one hand and on the other derivable income benefitting and thus silencing family and kinsmen.

The social imaginary of prostitutes’ bodies as carriers of disease that was propagated by colonial narratives still resonates in postcolonial Nigeria. The health of prostitutes and the wider implications of health on the politics of the empire have been discussed in various scholarly works. ⁵⁴ In Nigeria the high incidence of venereal diseases among members of the colonial army at the turn of the twentieth century resulted in the criminalization of prostitutes for being carriers of disease. Interestingly, Aderinto’s study indicates that colonial efforts to tackle the menace of venereal diseases were exclusive of prostitutes and rather targeted the Nigerian colonial army. Efforts were centred on curative measures including punitive actions that were deterrent in nature, from “cock-pulling or public displays of genitals” for contracting venereal diseases to fines of 6d per day for concealing a disease. ⁵⁵ In spite of the high incidence of venereal diseases in the 1940s during World War ii and the increase in the size of the Nigerian contingent of the colonial army as well as an influx of European seamen, no state efforts were made to carry out medical interventions with prostitutes. ⁵⁶

In postcolonial Nigeria, the hiv/aids epidemic has resulted in the focusing of the state and public gaze on sex workers as a high-risk group and drawn increased scrutiny from health organizations for the purposes of intervention. Statistics from unaids/who indicate that the estimated hiv prevalence rate for adults (15–49 age group) in 2001 was from 2.5 to 5.7 per cent, and this had decreased by 2007 to a range of 2.3 to 3.8 per cent. Aside from hiv/aids, other venereal diseases like syphilis and gonorrhoea are common. There is a correlation between a sex worker’s level of education and her ability to negotiate safe sexual relations. A prostitute’s socio-economic status also plays a part as those engaged in survival sex are less able to assert some form of agency in terms of the health risks they take. Physical violence, unwanted pregnancies, gynaecological complications arising from improper abortions, and to a lesser extent ritual deaths (killing for occult sacrifices) are some of the physical health issues faced by sex workers. Infertility was particularly rife in the early twentieth century among prostitutes, and the procurement of children from rural provinces by prostitutes in urban centres such as Lagos and across the border in Sekondi-Takoradi and Accra in Ghana were means by which disease-ridden, infertile prostitutes could assuage their maternal urges. ⁵⁷ In the twenty-first century, medical technology and its greater accessibility for a wider group of people, especially in cosmopolitan areas like Lagos, have mitigated the problem of infertility though it is still major issue especially among prostitutes practicing in the slums of Lagos.

Prostitute/Employer/Client Relationships

Prostitutes in Lagos in the early twentieth century worked independently for the most part. There was, however, a blurring of the operational spaces of women selling sex and “boma” and “jaguda” boys (street boys) who engaged in theft and criminal activities. ⁵⁸ Referring to them as pimps, Fourchard notes that the boys directed clients to prostitutes and provided security in the red-light district when needed. ⁵⁹ It would be erroneous however to label the young boys who assisted in procuring clients for prostitutes as “pimps” as we use the term today. In the contemporary era, pimping is popularly perceived as the management of sex work which involves more than periodic guidance and the providing of information. In its legal sense, pimping means living off the earnings of a prostitute. Inasmuch as the jaguda boys were remunerated for their services, they could in a broad and simplistic way be said to have lived off the earnings of a prostitute. An important element in pimping, however, is control which is sometimes coercive in nature, representing power over a prostitute and her income, and that did not exist. The prostitutes in colonial Lagos controlled their income and the way they worked. An exception to this rule was underage girls whose entry into the trade was often brokered by a third party. In this case, their services and working hours were controlled by their broker, mostly older or retired prostitutes. ⁶⁰

From the 1980s onwards, there has been an increasing diversification of the sex industry and this is evident in the increase in migration for prostitution, linkages between sold sex and corporate culture, and what Coy, Wakeling, and Garner term the “pornification of popular culture”. ⁶¹ This has turned the sex industry into a multi-dollar business managed by organized crime syndicates. A flourishing form of prostitution in which pimps and madams are commonly utilized is the abovementioned “runs” of educated women, most of whom are students at universities or other institutions of higher learning. At the University of Lagos, girls’ dorms and their environs have become sexualized spaces where sex is bartered and sold. While some of the girls work independently, many others employ the services of a pimp or madam (who may also be a student).

Interviews conducted with young women at the University of Lagos and Port Harcourt indicate that madams are often used in prostitution rings which are part of female gangs or fraternities at these institutions. The leader automatically assumes the position of madam, while pimps on the other hand can be male students or the personal assistants of politicians. They arrange for girls from the university campus to be taken to meeting points, usually a party. Prices may be set before the girls meet the clients or decided upon at the meeting point. Costs vary according to the economic status of the clients and range from N25,000 ($160) to N250,000 ($1,600). The role of pimps is gradually decreasing as more and more girls work independently as they solicit for clients through social networking and the use of internet sites like online dating.

Escort services are more likely to be used by more educated women such as those enrolled at institutions of higher education and those employed in the formal sector. Escorts perceive themselves as being superior to lower-end prostitutes and often enjoy a lavish lifestyle. They tend to exercise more control in terms of the clients they take and their working conditions. However, the ability to self-advertise has expanded the population of escort girls. The Lagos escort and strip club directory offers a list of escort girls, strip clubs, and escort agencies. ⁶²

Conditions of Compliance and Traces of Defiance

Prostitution is a heterogeneous space involving a diversity of forms, working conditions, status, and self-perceptions. The question of choice is closely interwoven with this and forms part of the dynamics of the trade. The extent to which coercion or choice determines a prostitute’s sexual activities is dependent on the position she occupies in the hierarchy in sex work. It is easy to discern coercion in cases of trafficked girls and women. Forced prostitution is more commonly experienced in such cases, as earlier noted among underage rural girls trafficked into prostitution in Lagos. For other women such as runaway wives, working girls, and other young women, entry into the sex trade occurred without coercion. Indeed commercialized sex has been utilized in many cases as a way for women to circumvent male control. Ssewakriyanga ⁶³ posits that in the sale of sexual services, the prostitute could be said to be resisting patriarchy and one-man control, thus defying stereotypical ideas of power.

Prostitution can be seen as an act of defiance and resistance directed against the social spaces to which women are traditionally confined, a countering of prescribed notions of womanhood and thus a threat to patriarchy. Relegated to the fringes of society, prostitutes continuously engage in ways to assert their individuality and rights with clients, pimps, and madams, as well as with society. The ability to do this and the extent to which this is done is dependent on several factors, one of which is socio-economic status. The more educated a sex worker is, the more she is able to negotiate the type of clients she takes and exert more control over her working conditions to mitigate occupational hazards. Meeting clients at neutral places, usually hotel rooms, is one such approach. Those who solicit for clients at bars and clubs often do it in groups, and they tell each other if anyone is going with a client. More importantly, many of the educated clandestine prostitutes have more access to the police.

The question of forced or free prostitution becomes problematic when considered in light of the number of people in the sex industry who are able to exercise choice. In other words, the freedom of “choice” is not so free but can only be exercised by a select few. Poverty can be read as a state of being that robs a prostitute of the right to make an informed choice because of a lack of other choices. This is particularly evident among poor prostitutes practicing in the slums of Lagos. It can also be applied to women who are forced to sell their sexual services to maintain their households, and students who sell sex to pay for their education. Free choice thus remains more elusive for low-ranking prostitutes in Lagos.

Conclusion

With the expanded field of permissible sexual expression and the loosening of societal constraints, young Nigerian women are increasingly employing their bodies as economic tools to gain access to societal resources. This choice has been further enhanced by increased knowledge about reproduction and the use of contraceptives. The Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey (ndhs) carried out in 2008 showed that over 50 per cent of women aged 25 to 49 had their first sexual encounters by the age of 18, and about 20 per cent by the age of 15. Knowledge about family planning methods has increased and 70 per cent of women are knowledgeable about family planning.

The female body has become demystified and female agency has been highlighted. However, as I have argued elsewhere, ⁶⁴ a woman’s choice to trade her body as a marketable product cannot be analysed outside the value society places on female sexuality. It could be argued therefore that prostitution among women in Nigeria develops out of the symbolic meaning that Nigerian culture assigns to the female being. In tandem with societal conceptions of their sexuality, young women place their sexual demands within these boundaries to elicit male responses. This sexual objectification of the female is discursively produced as the norm and sustained by the sexual domination implicit in media representations of women. Visible in many newsstands across the country are sexually graphic magazines and pornographic videos that can be accessed by young and old alike, and media adverts are projected through sexually coded language. This representation of women as objects of desire goes hand-in-hand with images of the sexy chic woman. Prostitution, whether cloaked as “clubbing” or “campus runs”, thus becomes a means of attaining the “ideal” look. The body therefore becomes an economic tool and a source of capital. ⁶⁵