How Lagos Sex Workers Restrategise To Beat Recession

CYRIACUS IZUEKWE

It is really not the best of time for the commercial sex workers especially in Lagos as they lament over low patronage by their clients due to the panging economic recession in Nigeria.
To  survive, our correspondent findings revealed, the sex workers have devised other legitimate strategies of combining hawking of some items at the same time used it to contact and seek door to door services for clients willing to satisfy their libido on the go.
Some of the stuffs hawk by the sex workers to survive now include perfumes, necklace, clothes, wrist watches, prepared food, soft drink, boxers and many other items which enable them contact and solicit for clients for their services.
Some of the bubbling hotels where their trade usually boomed in the past, are partially deserted as the traffic of clients have reduced drastically. And for them to sustain their living, settle their accommodation charges, general maintenance and take care of their families, they have to device other ingenious ways to survive.
Some of the hotels visited by our correspondent in Surulere, Yaba, Ikotun, Ajegunle, Mushin, Iyana Ipaja, Agege and Lagos Island, revealed same complaint galore by the sex workers.
The workers said despite the fact that they do not reject any price offer for rounds of sex unlike in the past, only few men still come in to patronize them.
Some of the workers who spoke to our correspondent, said that they had to combine the two businesses so as to make end meets as men seem no longer much interested in paying for sex.
“Some will even come and will be asking for credit for sex whereas they (sex workers) have some bills to pay especially accommodation daily,” one of them said.
One of the workers identified as Ifeoma James told our correspondent that since sex-hungry men hardly come to patronise them now, they have to survive and find legitimate solution.
Ifeoma said virtually all sex workers in Lagos now hawk one ware or another to make extra money to add to the little income they generate through prostitution.

She noted that some have been so lucky to have made huge money from hawking and even abandoned hotels and now concentrate in selling those wares.
Another worker who simply identified herself as Onome at one of the hotels in Agege confessed that patrons are no longer coming and they quickly realized they cannot cope relying only on prostitution to make ends meet.
She said they usually leave the hotel in the morning to hawk their items and in the course of doing it, they equally solicit for patrons for sex in a subtle way.
“We buy and hawk wares and at the same time solicit for customers. We usually create atmosphere for such customers to talk to us and once they do, we easily agree. Some of them take us to a nearby hotel for short rest and in the process they pay us some extra money as transport,” Onome said.
She also revealed other ways they attract customers which include attending events such as weddings and other parties, church services where they meet people who may not know they are sex workers.

“We solicit for clients at these places subtly. many of us mostly lucky to make some returns and we later in the evening returned to our hotels to wait for a few who may still come for us,” she said.
She disclosed that virtually all the sex workers engage in such strategy now as a mean of earning additional income for survival in this recession time.