- Ladies share reasons for embracing prostitution as stakeholders fume
Most Nigerian ladies, especially those living in cosmopolitan cities have turned sex into trade and means of survival, a three-month investigation by The Point has revealed.
This modem form of prostitution is popularly known as “hookup” or “runs”. It is slightly different from the traditional commercial sex venture whereby prostitutes populate brothels and wait for male fun-seekers who visit them, bargain with them physically, take them into their rooms and afterwards, collect some amount of money for their services.
According to Wikipedia, hookup is a culture that accepts and encourages casual sex encounters, including one-night stands and other related sexual activity, without necessarily including emotional intimacy, bonding or a committed relationship.
Hookup is otherwise known as non-relationship sex or sex without dating.
Findings by The Point have revealed that there is a hookup culture boom in Nigeria. This pleasure business is majorly transacted on social media. These young ladies popularly called “runs girls” who are on social media handles, mostly Telegram, openly advertise their readiness to offer sex, sex chats, sexual video calls and all manners of pleasures for men in as much the men are willing to pay them huge amounts.
With phrases such as “available dm” (dm means direct message), “active”, “DM if you are interested, I am available for HK (short rest), SVC (Sexual Video Chats), overnight, these ladies seek men’s attention in several groups that have been populated by youths.
Contrary to viral thinking that those who engage in this hookup business are jobless, The Point’s investigation revealed that a good number of them are working class ladies who are into one legitimate business or the other.
While some are very young spinsters, others are single mothers. Most of them are undergraduates while a few of them are secondary school leavers.
Most of the profiles of these hookup babes, as they are fondly called on Telegram, TikTok and other social media platforms bear their varying compromising photos while others post pornographic contents to further entice their clients.
Immediately their potential customer says hi to them through their direct messages on social media, they reply to you with some questions such as “hi, short or overnight?, “your location?.”
There are different prices for the services they render.
“Short time is N20,000, overnight is N50,000” a lady with the profile name LadyGold, informed this reporter when he sought to have a clue of their charges.
Others charge higher while the least is N10, 000 if the distance is close.
It was gathered that most of these hookup babes allow men to have intercourse with them without using protection in as much as they are willing to pay them hugely.
Further findings revealed that these ladies get more patronage at night and weekends.
Meanwhile, some of them in their various chats with this reporter blamed the economic hardship for taking up the prostitution path while others argued that it is better to commercialize sex than giving it free to a boyfriend who would later ditch them.
“For me, hookup is my side hustle. How much are they paying me at my workplace? It is not enough to sustain me, so I needed to do this to meet my needs,” a lady told The Point reporter via chat.
Sharing her reason for practicing hookup, a lady identified as Nickie, claimed that many of them took to prostitution because of serial disappointment they get from their male lovers.
“In all honesty, guys are responsible for this hookup we are into. Imagine that a girl will date a guy for years, giving him sex whenever he wants it without asking for anything in return, but, in the end, the guy will break your heart and jump on another girl. So, I would rather use my body to get money than offer it to a guy who will later make me cry,” she said.
It was observed that the ladies are not the only persons indulging in hookup. Some men also make good money from offering their body to ladies who are willing to pay them.
This hookup culture is thriving amid increasing reports of disappearance, deaths and ritual killing among ladies who move from one city to another in a bid to satisfy men’s sexual desire for money.
Till the time of this report, the whereabouts of two ladies, Celine and Afiba, are yet unknown amid speculation of their deaths after they visited a man, Andrew Ochekwo in Aba, Abia State.
Meanwhile, stakeholders have lamented the trend and cautioned Nigerian youths against promiscuity and other risky adventures.
In an interview with The Point, a cleric, Bishop Seun Adeoye, explained that the moral decadence is due to societal problems, broken homes, greed on the part of ladies and lack of an effective education system.
The Lead Bishop of Anglican Worldwide Church in Nigeria said, “Hookup is a societal problem. There are some parents that everything in their mind is for their children to get money, particularly young ladies. Young ladies that have no job, young ladies that are still in school, you expect them to get money, but what you should give to them, you did not give to them. The problem starts from the parents. Parenting is a very critical matter and if we have failed in parenting, then such children will fall into extreme hookup problems.
Tracing the disturbing culture to consequences of broken homes, Adeoye stated that, “If the home is broken, the children become vagabonds and they can do whatever thing they like and therefore, this is what we see.”
“Another thing is the clamour to get rich by all means. They want to ride cars; they want to live a kind of big life among their friends, among their peers. And a little attraction takes them away. They lure them with nothing. Some of them find themselves in the hands of kidnappers, ritualists and all of that. I think society has to do something urgently to curb this trend,” the clergyman added.
He called on religious leaders to desist from preaching prosperity alone at the detriment of pious lifestyle. Adeoye charged the government to strengthen policies in education and rejig the curriculum and make school attractive in order to prevent school dropout.
Cautioning young ladies against the act, he said, “I think we should also caution our girls. It is not all things that are glamorous that are golden. They should as a matter of fact think of their future, and they should believe that the future is still brighter without them falling into wrong hands. You can’t believe that as old as I am, people still send love messages to me on Facebook and try to hook me up. It is because of the societal problem that we have. What of STDs and some other things that may affect them in future? They should think of their future. Social media is good but it depends on what you use it for. The NGOs should also come together and rescue some of these girls.”
Reacting to the rise in disappearance of ladies who embarked on visiting online lovers, veteran Nollywood Actor, Kanayo O. Kanayo advised ladies to prioritize dignified labour rather than exchanging their bodies for money.
Addressing youths, especially ladies, Kanayo said, “I am talking to you as a family person, elder, father, brother. What is worth all the gold in your life? You meet a guy from Ghana, or Lagos to Aba, what do you know about him? It pains me because I have a daughter, and what will she be told, for her to leave Ghana or Lagos to meet a man in Aba, for what, and how much?
“I agree that times are hard but it pays to be hard working. I appreciate young women working hard for their money, selling hair, selling this, getting into one business or the other, then flexing around, going to see a man in Aba, or Port Harcourt, then send you a ride. Wake up to responsibility, there is dignity in labour.”
A non-governmental organization that is committed to empowering women and girls for improved quality of life and social change, Centre for Women’s Health and Information highlighted poverty level and deprivation within the country as major cause of moral debasement and commercialization of selves.
Taking governments and other stakeholders to task, CEWHIN Director, Mrs. Atinuke Odukoya, in an interview with The Point said, “The level of poverty and the deprivation within the community as a nation as a whole is a major contributory factor to these things. We live in a society where people don’t value hard work, we look down on people that are working hard and earning small income. The realities of the fact that how much can your income take you? It is not a reason for putting yourself in the line of danger or using immoral means to acquire resources but this is where we have found ourselves.”
Proffering panacea, Odukoya stated, “This should be dealt with from the angle of the fact that the foundation is shaky. How many people can get decent work even if they want to work and how much of their jobs can pay the bills? Nigerians don’t value people they think are at the lower rung of the ladder. Because the people at the government don’t value what they are doing, they feel they don’t deserve the minimum wage proposed even when all of us go to the same markets. What is the value set of the vibe of our society? We need to get people to understand the value of their lives beyond money and resources and what they have and what they don’t have. People hail those that are wealthy and drive expensive cars. Changing mindset and social norms is one of the solutions.”