[Port Harcourt, Nigeria]
Preamble
& Essential Digressions:
“He that is
without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
In
some parts of Papua New Guinea (1), an aspiring bride worth her sugar
must, as a matter of rudimentary courtesy, sound parental up-bringing, and solid
character, have sex with every man in the
village as part of their traditional wedding protocol, in order to affirm her
dignity and also guarantee her fertility, in strict conformity with their
cherished, rich, and ancient culture! Meanwhile, in another part of the same
Papua New Guinea, members of the Dani ethnic nationality rarely have sex. By
tradition, in order to acquire sufficient respectability, newly wedded couples
must wait for as long as 5 years before they copulate.
In
Cooks Islands (1), located in the South Pacific Ocean, older married
women have the exclusive statutory and civic duties of routinely introducing,
initiating, instructing, grooming, and practicalising the science and art of
advanced reproductive dynamics with teenage boys. Their religion cautions them
that repeated indulgence in less than three (3) solid “rounds” per 24 hours,
ultimately leads to acute schizophrenia.
Eskimos
in Northern Canada and Greenland have drastically simplified the process of
wedding. Marriages are arranged at birth (1). Eskimo law demands that
marriages can only be deemed official if, and only when, such couples start
copulating. At the exact moment of their debut pre-marital sexual
experimentation, they are automatically translated to the realm of graciously
married husband and wife. No further ceremonies are needed, or may even be
tolerated by their strict marital ethics and etiquette. Different strokes for
different folks. Different lanes for different brains. Simple!
At
this point, we might as well ask: Where, precisely, is the baseline for
accurately assessing promiscuity? Who then is a prostitute? Why does one
woman’s indulgence in debauchery and apparent nymphomania become another
woman’s expression of heavenly love, guided sensuality, respectable womanhood,
political correctness, and passport to high social and moral standing? Why does
prostitution thrive? What constitutes sexual exploitation (sexploitation)?
What is the long-term utility of all the “aggressive”
anti-prostitution “pet projects” and crusades of their Excellencies, the
spouse of the Executive Governor of Edo State, and that of the Vice President of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Why did those high-profile moral crusaders not actively
object, or even join in the recent deafening global uproar against the proposed
stoning to death of a fellow Nigerian woman, Ms. Safiya Hussain, because she got
pregnant with, or without her consent, and without being married? Why is an
institution like prostitution, that is so very well known to almost every living
imbecile on earth, suddenly, being rediscovered
in Nigeria? Why should an ancient institution that sociologists have
researched and understood reasonably well, now appear to be of such crucial
concern to Nigerians? Why?
Our
task is to take a global look at the institution of prostitution, given the
quantum of apparent paranoia caused so far about the exploitation of Nigerian
prostitutes, both at home and abroad. We will also attempt to gain a better
understanding of prostitution at the global level, and hopefully, provide
answers to the many interesting questions above.
Background
& Statement Of The Problem:
The
utter futility of applying legislative methods in coping with prostitution is
obvious. Governmental suppression and moral crusades accomplish nothing
meaningful except driving the problem underground, multiplying its hazards to
society. The more rigorous the method of harassment, the worse the condition
becomes. For example, in 1560, Charles IX abolished brothels in France by royal
decree. However, the numbers of French whores simply increased, while many new
brothels mushroomed in previously unknown places and in unsuspected forms, and
therefore, more dangerous. In spite of all such draconian laws, or rather, because
of them, there has been no other country in which prostitution played a more
prominent role as it did in France (6)
Formerly,
while they were comparatively protected in their brothels, suddenly, American
prostitutes found themselves on the streets, completely at the mercy of greedy
bribe-hungry policemen. Desperate, needing protection and longing for affection,
those girls naturally proved an easy prey for pimps, themselves the result of
the mood of a new dawn of international trading and commerce. Thus, pimping was
an offshoot of police harassment, corruption, and attempted clampdown on
prostitution. Mere suppression and barbaric criminalisation can embitter, and
further degrade the unfortunate victims. Foolhardiness has reached its highest
expression in a proposed law that makes any humane treatment of prostitutes a
crime in the US, punishable by five years of imprisonment and a US$10,000 fine.
Such an attitude merely exposes the terrible lack of understanding of the true
causes of prostitution, as a social factor, as well as manifesting a
“holier-than-thou” posture.
In
Nigeria, all of a sudden, social “reformers”
seem to have made an earth-shattering breakthrough: Indeed, they have
re-invented the wheel of cross-border trading and trafficking in young and old
women for sex. Nigerians have been force-fed their due rations of denunciations
of “modern day slavery”, while
their lawmakers are scheduling new laws to curb the blight. By and large,
whenever public opinion is to be hijacked, sidetracked, tele-guided, derailed,
or anaesthetised, a crusade is
launched, (with a general theme conjured from a basket of foggy ideas like “Operation Feed the Nation” (OFN which, very coincidentally, is the acronym for Obasanjo
Farms Nigeria),
WAI, Viagra, PTF, armed robbery, Sharia,
corruption, 419, Abacha, “True Federalism”, secret cults, the hazards of
“pure water”, Maradona, prostitution, banishing HIV/AIDS and malaria from
Africa; guided deregulation,
foreign investors, adultery, “resource control”, drug barons, phantom coups,
”no vacancy” in Aso Rock, 2003, self-succession, Afghanistan, poverty
alleviation, undue radicalism, etc, ad nauseam). Funny enough, there is
almost always a corresponding increase in individual depravity
and general indiscipline in
Nigeria, subsequent to such crusades.
Prostitution
has been, and is, a widespread problem, yet humanity goes about its business,
perfectly blasé about the ordeals of the victims of prostitution. To believe
that the new-wave curiosity (indeed, a very phoney curiosity for that matter)
about trafficking of young and old women for sexual gratification) has
discovered anything new, is, to say the very least, patently dim-witted.
Nigerians are as indifferent to sexploitation
as they have been to similar other manifestations of political
and economic prostitution within their country.
It
is only when tragedies become playthings, complete with blinking colourful
lights, that toddlers become excited and interested, even if momentarily.
Nigerians have been taken for infants that must be distracted daily with new
toys. The “righteous" outcry
against teenage, and/or “mature” prostitution is one such toy.
It serves to amuse Nigerians for a little while, and it helps to create a few
more juicy jobs for political pests (sycophants and official praise-singers) to
perambulate across the globe as “pet
project” co-ordinators, liaison persons,
Special Advisers, inspectors, investigators,
and so on, and so forth, maybe, until 2003.
What,
exactly, is the driving mechanism for the trafficking of (African, European,
Asian, Caribbean, Arab, American, or Russian) women? The answer is simple: Exploitation.
Exploitation drives thousands of under-paid young girls and even older women
into prostitution. They think rather naively, "Why waste your life working for a few naira a month?” Naturally,
our “reformers” say nothing about
the cause. They know it well enough, but it is much more convenient to pretend
an outraged morality, than to go to the very bottom
of the matter.
Sociological
studies have shown that modern (industrial) society leaves most women almost no
alternative except prostitution. Most
prostitutes belong to the lowest stratum of society: the working class. Nowhere
is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex object.
It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to
keep a position in whatever line, with sex favours. Thus, it is merely a
question of details whether a woman sells herself to one man, in or out of
marriage, or to many men. Whether our Nigerian moral crusaders
and “reformers” admit it or not, the economic and (benign or overt) social
inferiority imposed on woman is responsible for prostitution worldwide.
Nigerians
must be rudely shocked out of their individual complacency and collective naïveté
by recent disclosures that in New York City, US of A, about 10% of the women
work in factories, where their average wage, for working between 48 ~ 60
(forty-eight to sixty) hours weekly, is US$6 (six dollars). Majority of them
face many months of idleness, bringing their average wage to about US$280 per
annum in New York, about the same as the per capita income of a typical Third
World citizen. In view of these economic nightmares, why should prostitution and
women trafficking not become so prevalent? For the benefit of the sceptics, we
will review what some authorities on prostitution have to say:
A
Global Review of the Operating environment of Prostitutes:
A
major cause of prostitution can be evaluated, using data on the employment
status and wages of prostitutes before they took on to active prostitution. It
is left for political economists to decide how far business considerations may
be used as excuses for prostitution, which, in the first place, is the direct
result of insufficient compensation of honest
work. Our present-day “reformers”
would do well to know that, out of some 2,000 cases studied recently (4),
very few prostitutes actually came from the middle class, or from well-ordered
environments, or from stable families. Some working girls and working women went
into prostitution out of sheer necessity, others because of the cruel and abject
circumstances of their homes,
others again, because of disillusionment. In addition, it will do much good if
the “puritans” and “moralists” know that about 25% of the prostitutes
studied were married women, who actually lived with their husbands. Clearly, not
even the “sanctity of marriage”
could guarantee their “fidelity”, “security”, and “purity".
A
school of though is very emphatic about the economic roots of prostitution
(5). The argument is that, although prostitution
existed in all past eras, it was in the 19th century that it developed into a
gigantic business network. The development of industry with vast numbers of
players in the competitive global market, the rapid growth and congestion of
large cities, the insecurity and uncertainty of employment, gave prostitution
the impetus it had in 19th century Europe. A large percentage of prostitutes
is recruited from the lowest social classes. The daily routine, drudgery, and
tedium of a “house help” are non-trivial factors that force her to seek
relaxation and escapism in the merriment and sparkle of prostitution, given the
fact that she may never partake of the luxury of positive group identity, and/or
experience the thrills of a happy family. In other words, an economically
challenged (house) girl, more or less treated as a slave, never having the right
to herself, and worn out by the whims and brainwaves of her “madam”, or/and
“oga”, and/or “madam’s children”, and in fact, anybody, can find an outlet,
just like her “corporate, upward mobile, professional, Iron Lady” peer, only
via prostitution.
The
most amusing aspect of the matter is the zeal with which "highly-placed and
respectable people" like the various “Her Excellencies”, “Women Party
Leaders”, pseudo-feminist NGOs and religious purists, almost always champion
every anti-prostitution campaign in
Nigeria. Could it be that they are ignorant of the history of religion,
especially of the Christian religion? Alternatively, is it because they conspire
to blind the present generation to the part that religion played in the past,
vis-à-vis prostitution? Whatever
their reasons, they should be the last to cry out against today’s unfortunate
victims, since it is known to every intelligent student that prostitution is of
religious origin, nurtured and propped up for several centuries, not as an act
of ignominy, but as a positive personal attribute.
The
deep roots of prostitution may be traced to religious tradition. For instance,
there are well-documented examples in the fifth century BC, at a Temple in
Babylon, where every woman, once in her life, went and presented herself to the
first unfamiliar man who threw a coin between her thighs, in order to worship
and meditate effectively. Similar customs existed in some parts of Asia, North
Africa, and Mediterranean Europe, especially in Greece, at the Temple of
Aphrodite. All authoritative writers on the subject maintain the theory that
religious prostitution developed out of the belief that human reproduction
possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting natural abundance.
Gradually, however, when prostitution
finally became an organised enterprise under priestly influence, religious prostitution became utilitarian, thus helping to boost public
revenue for the Treasury.
The
rise of religion to political power produced little change in policy. The
leading patriarchs of the early Roman Catholic Church tolerated prostitution.
Brothels under municipal protection existed in 13th century Europe.
They constituted a sort of public service whose operatives and managers were
considered almost as civil servants. (6) Pope Clement II promulgated a decree that was benevolent
enough to have allowed Italian prostitutes
to be tolerated for as long as they paid a stipulated percentage of their gross
earnings to the Vatican. Pope Sixtus IV was more practical. From one single
brothel that he built, he received regular and reasonable returns on his wise
investment. However, now, in the 21st century, churches are a little
more tactful and painstakingly hypocritical. They no longer openly insist on
dues, taxes and levies from prostitutes. It is much more efficient, profitable,
and less of a hassle to rent out sub-standard and over-invoiced buildings to
prostitutes through reliable and God-fearing third party (preferably “Born
Again”) surrogates!
Conditions
in the Middle Ages were remarkably interesting. Prostitution was organised into
trade unions, ultimately presided over by an experienced harlot: a “Queen”.
Those unions employed strikes as powerful weapons for improving their conditions
of service and for negotiating reasonable consultancy service charges. It would
be extremely frivolous to argue that economic factors constitute the only cause
of prostitution. There are several others. Our “reformers”
know very well, but they dare not discuss a topic that saps the very life
out of men and women, the “Sex
Question”, the very mention of which causes most people moral
paroxysms.
Worldwide,
more or less, women are being brought up as sex objects, and yet they are kept
in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex. Everything dealing
with that subject is suppressed. Anybody that tries to shed any light on this
terrible darkness is either victimized or ridiculed. Nevertheless, it is true
that so long as a girl does not know how to take care of herself, not to know
the function of the most important aspect of her life, we need not be surprised
if she becomes an easy prey to prostitution,
or to any other form of relationships which degrade her to the position of a
mere pleasure object.
We
have long ago taken it as self-evident that boys may follow the call of the
wild. In other words, that a boy may, as soon as his libido asserts itself,
satisfy it. However, our moralists are scandalized at the very thought that the
sexuality of a girl should assert itself. To the moralists, prostitution does
not matter so much simply because a woman sells her body, but rather because she
sells it out of wedlock. That this is no mere statement is confirmed by the
fact that, marriage, for monetary considerations, is considered perfectly
legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion, while any other union is
condemned and repudiated. Yet a prostitute, if properly defined, means nothing
else than "any person for whom sexual
relationships are subordinated to gain”. (4) In fact,
prostitution is intrinsically equal to
that of a man or woman who contracts a marriage for economic advantage.
Of
course, marriage is the ultimately desirable goal of most young girls. However,
since a significant proportion of them cannot or may not marry, our stupid
social norms condemn them either to a life of celibacy or prostitution.
Unfortunately, human nature asserts itself regardless of man-made laws. There is
no plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted
conceptualisation of morality.
Society
considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development,
while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible
catastrophe, a loss of honour and of all that is good and dignified in a human
being. This double standard of morality has played a major role in the creation
and perpetuation of prostitution. It
involves the keeping of young girls in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which
so-called "innocence”, together with a pent up and subdued sexuality,
helps to bring about the very state of affairs that our puritans are now so
anxious to eradicate or prevent. Not that the gratification of sex must lead to
prostitution, it is the cruel, heartless, and criminal harassment of those who
dare deviate from the vicious cycles of deprivation, hopelessness, and poverty
that are responsible for it.
For
example, most “house helps”, some of them, mere children, work for 12 ~ 16
hours daily, which tends to keep them in a constant state of disorientation.
Many of them have no comforts of any kind; and so, the street, or some other
place of cheap amusement, is the only means of forgetting their daily routine.
This naturally brings them into close proximity with the opposite gender. It is
hard to say which of the two factors brings a girl's over-sexed condition to a
climax. Nevertheless, it is certainly the first step towards prostitution. It is
not her fault. On the contrary, it is the fault of those moralists, who condemn
a girl for all eternity, just because she strayed away from the "path
of virtue"; without the formal approval of the most dominant Middle
Eastern religions in Nigeria: Christianity and Islam.
A
young girl feels like a complete outcast, with the doors of her home and society
firmly closed in her face. Her entire training and indoctrination is such that
she feels rather depraved and fallen, and therefore has no firm ground to stand
upon, or any support that will lift her up, instead of dragging her down. Thus,
society creates the victims that it futilely attempts to salvage afterwards. The
meanest, most depraved and decrepit old man still considers himself too good to
take as his wife a girl whose charm he was once quite willing to buy, even if he
might thereby save her from a life of emotional trauma. Such girls cannot even
turn to their fellow women, their more fortunate “sisters”, and
“aunties” for help. Instead, their luckier “big sisters”, “sugar
aunties” and “sweet mummies”, in their stupidity, quite too often, see
themselves as too “pure and chaste”, without even realising the irony that
their own predicaments, in many respects, are even more horrendous than those of
their prodigal “baby sisters” of the street.
The
respectable but mercenary wife, so-called woman of substance, cash madam, and
“mother of the day” at high society weddings, who actually schemed out,
aggressively psyched her “rivals”, and eventually married for money,
compared with the prostitute, is the ultimate victim. (6) She is paid less,
gives much more in return in the form of labour and constant “tender loving
care”, and is absolutely bound to her “oga” and master, her husband. The
prostitute never signs away her rights to any person. She retains her freedom
and personal rights. She is definitely not obliged to submit to any particular
man's embrace unconditionally: “for better or for worse”, for whatever it is
worth.
In
the European Union (EU), for example, about 50% of all married men patronise prostitutes.
It is through this “virtuous” route that married women (and even their
children) end up being infected with strange venereal diseases. Yet society has
not even a word of condemnation for such men, while no law is too monstrous to
be set in motion against their helpless victims. Those who patronise prostitutes do not only prey upon them, but they (the prostitutes)
are also completely at the mercy of every egunje-addicted
policeman on the beat, treacherous plain-clothes CID operatives on the prowl,
idle sadistic O/Cs and DPOs at the police station, and even diabolical prison
warders nationwide.
Equally
blown out of proportion is the cliché that the majority of Nigerian street
girls in European, Asian, American, and South African cities were necessarily
engaged in the business of prostitution before they left Nigeria. Most of them
were driven into prostitution by prevailing conditions of excessive display of
vain materialism and inordinate consumerism in Nigeria and in their host
counties abroad, which, of course, necessitates money. Money that they cannot
earn legitimately in offices, or shops or factories in Europe, America, or Asia,
or even Nigeria. In other words, there is no reason to believe that any set of
men would take the risk and expense of patronising Nigerian prostitutes,
when the market is over-flooded with thousands of their own girls. On the other
hand, there is sufficient evidence to prove that the export of Nigerian girls
for the purpose of prostitution is by no means marginal.
A
former US Assistant State Attorney of Cook County, Illinois, made a public
indictment that American prostitutes are routinely shipped to Panama for the
express use of Americans on active military service there. He lost his job
thereafter. It is not advisable for men in high public office to tell such
tales. The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that there were no
decent brothels there. That is the usual escape route for a hypocritical society
that dares not face the truth. Prostitution always only exists elsewhere,
preferably and most likely, in Nigeria! Our very own respectable, “Holy Marys”
and “Virgin Mariams” of the master bedrooms of executive power,
unfortunately reinforce their stereotype.
In
Yokohama, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, American prostitutes have made themselves so
conspicuous that in the Far East, "American
girl" is synonymous with “prostitute”.
While American prostitutes in China are under the protection of their embassy,
Chinese prostitutes in the US of A have no such protection at all. Most Western
European and Asian major cities
(London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Brussels, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Lisbon,
Munich, Berlin, Oslo, Naples, The Hague, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok), all
have their so-called “Red Light Districts” that are well known and even
proudly exhibited to tourists.
In
view of all of the above, it is rather absurd to point to Nigeria as the cesspit
from where all the social syndromes of Europe, Asia, and America originate.
Nigerian girls and women hardly migrate to strange lands, unless they have some
sort of ties or relations that take them there. The Nigerian girl is not that
adventurous. In fact, only until recently, the average Nigerian girl never left
home alone, not even so far as the next village or town, except it was to visit
some relative. Is it then believable that young Nigerian girls would leave their
parents or families, travel across thousands of kilometres to strange lands,
through the influence and promises of strange forces? Definitely, there will be
exceptions, but to state that large numbers of Nigerian girls are imported for
prostitution, or any other purpose, is simply not to understand the psychology
of Nigerians.
To
ascribe the increase in prostitution to alleged importation, or to the growth of
the pimping system, or similar causes, is highly superficial. As for pimping,
abhorrent as it is, it is essentially a phase of modern prostitution:
a phase accentuated by tyranny and corruption, resulting from self-righteous
moralisations and sporadic crusades against prostitution.
The client of a prostitute is, of course, a very poor specimen of humanity, but
in what manner is he more despicable than a police officer who takes the last
lire, penny, cent, euro, or yen from a Nigerian prostitute overseas, only to
turn around and lock her up in a police cell? Why is the pimp more criminal, or
a greater pain in the neck to society than the owners of department stores and
factories, who grow fat on the sweat of the pimp, only to drive him to the
streets? There is absolutely no justification for pimping, but it is very
difficult to appreciate why a pimp should be so cruelly hounded, while the real
perpetrators of all social iniquity enjoy immunity and respect. It is well to
remember that it is not the pimp who makes the prostitute. Our charade and
hypocrisy create both the prostitute and the pimp.
Enlightened
public opinion, completely unencumbered from all manner of legalese and
self-righteous moralisations about prostitution, could significantly help to
ameliorate present conditions. An ostrich-like wilful shutting of eyes and
ignoring prostitution as a social factor of 21st century life will
only aggravate matters. We must rise above our naive notions and
"holier-than-thou” posturing, and learn to recognise in the prostitute a
product of our collective social dilemmas. Such a realisation would brush aside
the attitude of hypocrisy, and insure a greater understanding and more humane
treatment. As for a radical and complete eradication of prostitution,
nothing can accomplish that except a complete transvaluation of all accepted
norms especially those that are anchored on selective morality, coupled with the
abolition of 21st century slavery. The complete dismantling and
abandonment of consumerist factory production macho mentality.
References:
1st April 2002.