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.
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