By Erasmus Ikhide
GOVERNOR Godwin Obaseki of Edo State is not my friend, but he took a
decision I should have taken a long time ago myself if I were seating
in Osadebe Avenue as the Governor of the state by prohibiting the
embarrassing and bizarre open ended practice of prostitution in Benin
City.
For a fact – except we’re running away from the sordid reality – every
Edo citizen, home and abroad, has borne the humiliating stigma of
wholesale accusation of being precursor of prostitution for ‘hailing
from the land of prostitution’! The appropriate tagging has long been
entrenched and taken as the gospel truth, and has remained like the
chameleon faeces that wouldn’t go away, however hard you deodorized
it.
Yours sincerely fell victim of prostitutes’ revolt early this year
when the curiosity in me – the first attribute of journalism levitated
– to video thousands of them at Ihama Road, covering the swathe of
Royal Marble junction, to the tale end of Edo House of Assembly
Legislative Quarters. I was rescued by a taxi driver out of the
horrific scene, having abandoned my marked car inside Exquisite Hotel,
opposite Royal Marble. What makes paid sex even more offensive,
worrisome is the terrible drama involved in it, coupled with the
associated rituals that are made out of what is done with the third
arms of the legs.
The abhorrent practices of girl child abuse in relation with
prostitution in Edo State has been long in coming in Benin City,
eventhough prostitution is as old as humanity. Places like Ugbague
street, Ihama, Country Home Road opposite Stella Obasanjo’s Women and
Children’s Hospital, Boligo Hotel at Upper Mission Extension and other
sexually sullen places are hotbeds and breeding grounds for human
trafficking.
Tragically, Benin City is one place where ugly and offensive
prostitution practice is exalted to abominable level where married
couples agreed for the wife to travel to Italy and other parts of
Europe to make money and send back home for the husband’s and
families- upkeep.
A particular traumatizing instance of such debasing scenarios left a
sour taste in the mouth. A relation of a family friend whose wife
returned home after ten years of prostitution in Italy found out that
the proceeds of prostitution she transferred to her husband to build a
home for them was diverted to marry more wives. The woman became
dejected, used and abandoned to waste away after being thoroughly
exploited, and sexually vandalised.
First, the banning of solicited open prostitution is one way out of
the labyrinth of state failure and citizens’ destitution on the state
and society. The government needs to take a step further by
strengthening its position on this by legislating against streets
begging, hawking and criminalization of illiteracy. Part of the
backlashes of prostitution in the state is the incidences of violence
crime since some of the prostitutes warehouse small arms and light
weapons and ammunition for criminal elements who are mostly armed
robbers, cultists and land grabbers.
Second, the state government should cooperate with anti-human
trafficking organisations such as The National Agency for the
Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), and related global
bodies to achieve effective results by way of reorientatating some of
them who are innocently lured into prostitution, one way or the other.
Lastly, the Governor should implement the much-talked-about
industrialisation policy of his administration in the state by way of
opening fabrics and shoe making factories for some of these whores to
work in, so that they can eke out a leaving for themselves and their
loved ones.
Until that is done, Edo State will remain the headquarter of
prostitution in Sub-Sahara Africa.
Erasmus Ikhide can be reached via: ikhideerasmus@gmail.com