Yes, how about we legalise prostitution? I know that to some people, it
\nsounds off-putting, but what exactly is your grouse against it? You
\nwould probably say your religion frowns against it. Or that it belies
\nyour pseudo-moralist view of what the right social behaviour should be.
\nSome might even go as far as saying their culture is not in support of
\nit. It\u2019s all crap. I think those are all excuses. You are just making
\nup excuses for you to be nasty; to be discriminatory without being
\nblamed for it. You just want to wear that holier-than-thou toga of bile
\nand blame piddly life situations for your confused and cowardly life.<\/p>\n
For some people, publicly condemning prostitution, or sex work, gives
\nthem the respect they believe they would otherwise not have; among their
\nfriends and families, neighbours and relatives, constituents and party
\nmembers. It doesn\u2019t matter, even if they only condemn prostitution at
\nday, and patronise a sensuously gorgeous strumpet at night. After all,
\nwe are Nigerians! – A bunch of hypocritical people who find respite in
\nputting people down, tearing people\u2019s lives apart in a pitiless
\nexcoriating swoop, and blaming all but themselves for their failures in
\nlife. As Nigerians, our acceptance or rejection of a thing depends
\nlargely on who is doing the thing. It doesn\u2019t matter, whether he\u2019s a
\nwanted drug lord in a foreign country or a degenerate paedophile, so
\nlong as he sprinkles his pork barrel 100 Naira notes whenever he drives
\nby that grubby hopeless street – he is a righteous man. It doesn\u2019t
\nmatter, if he sleeps with different kinds of strumpets every night, and
\ntaunts his followers on Instagram every morning; with a picture of him
\nballing with his well-paid cocottes, so long as he shares recharge cards
\nevery day – he is a righteous man.<\/p>\n
Even if he is a pastor, who only finds respite in the arms of
\nheavily-paid strumpets at dusk, so long as he dons his Gucci duds at
\ndawn, maintains his expensive fleets of private-jets and Cadillacs, and
\nspeaks jargon on the altar every Sunday claiming to communicate with God
\nin ‘tongues’ – he is a goddamn righteous man! It is of no importance,
\nwhether he glorifies these floozies in his music video, or even strips
\nthem naked with his pervy little hands while he\u2019s at it, so long as he
\ncan dazzle the public with his lifeless beats and create senseless
\ndances – he is a righteous guy living the life.<\/p>\n
In fact, it does not matter if he is a seventy-year-old man who has
\ndecided to take a thirteen-year-old girl as his new wife, so long as he
\ncan fend for the girl and her poverty-stricken family – he is the new
\nJesus that everyone must worship. Everywhere you look in this country,
\nthere are tinctures of normalised things worse than prostitution, but
\nbecause the persons doing those things have been granted the special
\nprerogative to do as they please, neither the people nor the rudderless
\nlackeys and moral fanatics in the police and other security agencies can
\nbe bothered.<\/p>\n
You see, we are fake people. We always prioritise the wrong things,
\ndemonise the wrong people, and canonise the benevolent devil. And then
\nwe complain when the evil we enabled comes home to roost. We forget that
\nwe cheered the hydra-headed evil when he decided to mug and grope that
\nrandom lady in the dark silent streets of Abuja, or the loud jaunty
\nnightclubs for \u201cdressing indecently.\u201d Yes, we forget how we jeered
\nthe opposing voices that insisted that the indiscriminate arrests,
\nabuses and tortures of women, in Abuja, dehumanises those we should
\ntreat with respect and dignity. We forget, that every time we cheered
\nthe beastly Nigerian policemen, the \u2018egalitarian\u2019 Social Development
\nSecretariat (SDS), the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) and
\nother state-backed institutions going around the city policing morality,
\nwe encourage the worst of us to dehumanise our women and girls. We
\nforget that each time this aberration is enabled, we leave the worst
\nevil in the wake of our pseudo-religious and pseudo-cultural fanaticism.<\/p>\n
Each week, we see and hear reports of another girl, another mother,
\nanother sister; another victim, randomly mugged and arrested, by these
\ndastardly inhumane lots, policing and dehumanising women, citing
\nprostitution as their crime, and their legally-backed license to
\nbestialise the feminine gender. The other day, I was left crashingly
\ndistraught, when a friend strolled in to a picnic, crestfallenly, and
\ntold me how a young girl of twelve was raped at Jabi-Lake, in Abuja, and
\nupon reporting the unfortunate incident to the police, was given N3, 000
\nby the police, to return to Lagos and never tell anyone of her ordeal.
\nWhen my friend found the girl, she was battered and traumatised,
\ndejected and lifeless. She took her in and fended for her; as has become
\nher job for a decade or so now. She too, a victim of molestation and
\nabuse, perpetrated by the same accursed Task Force.<\/p>\n
In fine, the twelve-year-old girl was checked into a hospital for
\nmedical checkup, alas, her HIV test came back positive. She is twelve;
\nyoung and innocent. When I paid her a visit at the hospital, she looked
\ndeadpan and charred. Although I could tell, she felt loved and cared
\nfor, but I wondered if she\u2019ll ever survive the heartbreaking news that
\nshe is HIV Positive. We couldn\u2019t tell her. At least, not yet. I
\ncouldn\u2019t stop thinking, the compulsory relationship she must now have
\nwith the pharmacology. When I asked her what she aspired to be in
\nfuture, she muttered softly and shyly; \u201ca Lawyer.\u201d I was struck with
\nempathy and sympathy. But I was also happy she would grow to defend the
\nright of others. Although we do not know for sure who raped her, we know
\nfor sure that the worthless fellow will meet his comeuppance; whether in
\nthis life or hereafter. This is one incident, – one among countless.<\/p>\n
The story of the girl above, I believe, cannot be viewed in isolation of
\nthe dehumanising operation of the FCTA Joint Task Force in the Federal
\nCapital Territory. Their haphazard arrests of women, public
\ndehumanisation of women, wilful groping and raping of women and a
\nsmorgasbord of inhumane abuses, are gradually cascading to a normal
\nthing in the public; a new social behaviour; a new norm that objectifies
\nwomen and canonises rape and sexual assault against women. The message
\nbehind this downright sexist public policy being executed by the FCTA
\nJoint Task Force is terribly pernicious; it is a message that
\npigeonholes all women in Abuja as prostitutes, and as a result, –
\nundeserving of human dignity and public sympathy. It is truly dangerous
\nand unthinkable, that a woman stands at a very high risk of being
\nharassed or raped, simply because she is a woman and living in Abuja.
\nWhat\u2019s worse, from the story of the twelve-year-old girl above, a
\nvictim of rape and sexual assault is more likely to be dismissed with
\nN3, 000 by the police, or completely disregarded by the Social
\nDevelopment Secretariat as a \u2018wandering prostitute\u2019. The dangers of
\nthis trend cannot be overemphasised, for this simply means that no woman
\nis safe in Abuja, sex worker or not.<\/p>\n
Surely, this evil agenda will not work if the people resist it; if women
\nin Nigeria resist it; if residents of Abuja stand firm against it. But
\nit takes more than resistance. A deliberate effort must be made to
\ncorrect the jaundiced public perception that a woman who chooses to do
\nas she pleases with her body, is debased and undeserving of dignity. On
\nthe contrary, that a woman chooses to exchange her body or vagina for
\nmoney does not make her debased; it only means she exchanges her body or
\nvagina for money. There are those who trade their vaginas for iPhones
\nand cars. There are those who exchange their vaginas for newly-built
\nhouses, and others for a smorgasbord of material things. If this
\nmutually beneficial trade between women and men is considered
\nprostitution, then all women and men are prostitutes. And if all women
\nand men are prostitutes, then both women and men should be arrested by
\nthe FCTA Joint Task Force. In the event that this cannot be done, then
\nthis anti-women charade, designed to dehumanise women and extort members
\nof the public on a large scale, must be clubbed into demise.<\/p>\n
Also, since our laws are presently silent and vague on prostitution, the
\ntime to be loud and clear on the issue might be now. In different parts
\nof Africa, prostitution is legal; and in other parts, it is on the rise.
\nIn African countries like Sierra Leone, Togo, Mali, Cote d\u2019Ivoire,
\nBurkina Faso, Benin, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Algeria, Zambia, South
\nSudan, Mozambique, Malawi, Madagascar, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic
\nof the Congo, and the Central African Republic; prostitution is
\nabsolutely legal. In some African countries like Senegal, Tunisia and
\nEritrea, prostitution is legal and regulated. More African countries
\nare, also, gradually falling in line with the trend of legalising
\nProstitution. Even in Rwanda where it is currently illegal, a draft of a
\nnew penal code that does not prohibit prostitution has been presented
\nfor debate in the Rwandan Parliament. All these countries have their
\ncultures and religions to protect, but they also recognise the freedom
\nof humans to make choices and live as they please.<\/p>\n
Really, the responsibility of government is not to hogtie citizens to
\nsome priggish, pseudo-moralistic, pseudo-religious fanaticism; but to
\nprovide an environment where they can freely and safely express
\nthemselves. By legalising prostitution, – or sex work as some prefer to
\ncall it, – and regulating its framework including stringent punishments
\nfor abuses like Child Trafficking, Pimping, and others, we would have:
\ngiven expression to women who wish to express themselves differently,
\nknocked down the vicious ring of prebendal extortions, and largely
\ncrushed the festering and dehumanising anti-women agenda in Abuja and
\nother parts of the country.<\/p>\n
_ADEBAYO RAPHAEL IS A HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT.
\nHE WRITES FROM ABUJA AND CAN BE REACHED ON TWITTER VIA @ASOROSOBIORO._<\/p>\n
Yes, how about we legalise prostitution? I know that to some people, it sounds off-putting, but what exactly is your grouse against it? You would probably say your religion frowns…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n