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The campaign is was led by Patoo
Abraham who has become famous for fighting for the rights of prostitutes, but
what she - and those she is trying to help - do to make a living is illegal and
frowned upon by many in the country.
Aljazeera report of August 4th, 2014 indicated
Abraham is not only proud of her profession but is also
campaigning to ensure that prostitution is legalised and that sex workers are
respected in Africa's most populous country.
The 48-year-old has led a couple
of protests in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, demanding the rights of
prostitutes in a country where sex vendors suffer physical harm at the hands of
their punters.
Under the auspices of different organisations,
scores of prostitutes marched on the streets of Lagos, chanting provocative
slogans.
This boldness is unprecedented, and the
protesters carried their signature red umbrellas and T-shirts with the
inscription "Sex work is work, we need our rights."
"We are tired of dying in silence,"
Abraham, who heads the Nigerian chapter of African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA),
told Al Jazeera. "We want to be able to practise our profession with pride
like every other person. We want an end to name-calling and stigmatisation. We
are sex workers and not asawo [a Yoruba derogatory name for
prostitutes]."
Sex work, said Abraham, is normal work and that
there are "sex workers everywhere under one form of disguise or the
other". "[The] government should stop criminalising our work,"
said the woman who is also the president of the Women of Power Initiative
(WOPI), a non-governmental organisation established to advance the cause of sex
work in Nigeria.
Although Nigeria has posted impressive economic
growth, overtaking South Africa to become Africa's largest economy,
unemployment remains widespread and many Nigerian women have ended up working
as prostitutes in part because they cannot find work.
Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in
April that no fewer than 5.3 million youths are jobless, and the World Bank last year put the number of
Nigerians living in destitution at 100 million.
Sister's advice
With large earrings and a face flamboyantly made up, Abraham sat in her
busy office, which she shares with another organisation, and told Al Jazeera
how she took the advice of her sister, a former prostitute, when life as a
single parent became too tough for her.
Though reluctant then, she now sees it as any other business and has no
regrets.
"Just as you are proud of your profession, that is how I am proud
of mine. Just as you are respected for being a journalist, that is how I want
to be respected," said Abraham.
Abraham uses the pseudonym "Patoo" in her daily work - a name
she chose to hide her identity when she began work as a prostitute.
She said her two children - a son and a daughter - are at university
and she pays tuition fees for them. They do not know her occupation, she said,
although she marched on the streets of Lagos for all to see.
In this oil-rich country of more than 160 million
people ravaged by poverty and deprivation, Abraham's work seems lucrative. But
Abraham and other women in this business still have the authorities and people
to contend with.
One of the prostitutes who identified herself
only as Janet, spoke of how police arrest them indiscriminately, raiding their
brothel even when they are with their clients.
"Sometimes, after reluctantly paying for our
services, they arrest us and take us to the [police] station and ask us to bail
ourselves with the same amount they paid us, thereby recovering their
money," Janet said in pidgin English.
"Some of us sustain serious injuries when
our customers beat us up and there is no one to protect us," she
added.
Other women raise even more serious complaints.
Outspoken and HIV-positive, 35-year-old Ayide, the only name she gave in order
to be quoted, attended one of the rallies and said it is not only the police to
blame.
"When we talk about police, we are pointing
accusing fingers at only one group. The fact is that all the uniformed men,
especially the mobile police [paramilitary arm of the police], are oppressing
us. They use their uniform to harass us. They extort money from us, beat us and
rape us," she said.
Abraham corroborated the claims of Janet and
Ayide, saying that people who stigmatised them and the security agents who
harassed them were a serious problem.
"People call us names but the funny thing is
that they don't even know if their wives, sisters or daughters are one of
us," she said in-between laughter.
"If I don't tell you that I am a sex worker,
you won’t know unless you see me here. Most of us are working as nurses in big
hospitals, some are bankers and even students, but you won’t know."
Raids on brothels
Philip Eze, the police officer in charge of Elere Police Division,
Lagos, explained that the police would not arrest prostitutes were it not for
the country's criminal code outlawing prostitution.
"In the Nigerian criminal code, if somebody is soliciting for men,
it is against the law and vice versa. The law does not cause confusions; we are
the ones causing confusion in the name of the law. I don't care if they have a
world association, it is illegal in Nigeria and their assembly is illegal
too," Eze said.
Responding to allegations of extortion, sexual harassment, and rape by
police, Eze said victims should report such cases and the offenders would be
prosecuted.
"Even though they are prostitutes, they have
every right to report rape and other human right abuses," he told Al
Jazeera.
Meanwhile, the fight between prostitutes and the
authorities continue.
Police occasionally raid brothels in Lagos and
make sweeping arrests in red light areas like Kofo Abayomi, Victoria Island,
Isaac John Street, and Allen Avenue.
Some of the lucky prostitutes end up in police
cells where they are interrogated and eventually released on bail. Others end
up serving jail terms of three to four months without an option of paying a
fine after being charged for loitering, public indecency or disorderly conduct
or engaging in acts inimical to the public good.
To stage the protest to mark the International
Sex Workers Rights Day 2014 without a clash with the authorities, the
prostitutes outsmarted the police, obtaining a permit under the auspices of
WOPI.
They took their demands to the authorities at
Shomolu Local Government, Lagos, where they were advised that legislators held
the key to their demand.
Previous attempts by lawmakers to have
prostitution legalised were unsuccessful.
In 2011, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy
Senate President of Nigeria, called for the complete legalisation of
prostitution, saying this would enable the government to regulate the
activities of prostitutes. The move sparked widespread criticism across the
country and Ekweremadu later regretted his comment.
But Margaret Onah, the founder of Safe Haven
Development Initiative and WOPI, who has campaigned for the rights of
prostitutes, said she is still planning to take protests to the national
assembly, and push for legislation that will decriminalise sex work and empower
women.
"Nigerian law does not specifically say anything against prostitution," Onah said. "What it says is that if a girl is caught openly soliciting for sex, and money is being exchanged, she should be arrested. But we know that if a girl is staying in a brothel, and is a sex worker, the brothel is more or less like her home." | ||||
Abeg, let them go and die. yeye prostitutes. ashawo na work?
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