Vanguard newspaper recently released an investigatory report on Calabar and here are highlights form it.
Calabar, Cross River State capital, is famous as the home of
bevy and succulent women. The
bulk of these women are girls from tertiary educational institutions in
the city. Teenage secondary school girls along with their city
colleagues who are also attractive make the population of women in the
city burst at the seam. To keep body and soul together, many of them
resort to “hustling”, a nomenclature for part-time prostitution
prevalent in the city.
These ‘hustlers’ operate from their
hostels and homes during nocturnal hours. They roam the streets,
especially around places with active night life like Atekong Drive,
Marian Road, Effanga Mkpa Street, Edabor Street,Third Avenue, Second
Avenue and highbrow eateries where people, particularly visitors,
congregate at night and can afford to pick them up for a fee to satisfy
their sexual appetite.
There are, however, indications that the
activities of these ‘hustlers’ are threatened by girls from Cameroon and
Niger Republic who, recently, descended on Calabar and are
systematically offering “better services” at cheaper fees to teeming
clients. These dark skinned new entrants, aged between 20 and 25 years,
seem poised to take over the trade and the local girls do not seem to be
finding it funny.
These
Cameroonian and Nigerien girls, apart from being classy like some of the
Calabar tertiary education institution girls, are available (night and
day), which gives them the edge as they give clients the opportunity to
take a shot at them whenever they want it unlike the local ‘hustlers’
who are available mostly at night.
Unyime, a young
man, who operates an ice cream spot in front of a famous fast food spot
along Atekong Drive/Marian Road , told Sunday Vanguard that the girls
are sex machines who can do anything anywhere because they have an “I
don’t care attitude”. Sunday Vanguard investigation revealed that,
unlike the local ‘hustlers’ who are predominantly students who come out
mostly at night and position themselves along strategic parts of the
city ostensibly for fear of being recognised by colleagues or
neighbours, these Cameroon and Niger girls are braggadocios and walk
about boldly around the city in the day and traverse popular night
clubs, fast food and beer joints to solicit for patronage. They take
residence in cheap hotels with fees ranging between N2,000 and 3,000
daily. So, clients, at any time of the day, don’t have to face the
headache of looking for joints where to pay for ‘short rest’. They can
simply join the girls right in their rented rooms where the cost is
built into her charges.
“These girls are everywhere in the city
and they are more or less sex machines as men sometimes wait for their
turns; this is the first time I am seeing a man wait in his car or sit
at the bar and wait for the person inside to come out before going in to
do the same thing the other person just did in the same place”,
Christian Edah, a bar attendant in one of the hotels told Sunday
Vanguard.
He said some of the girls take between 10 and 15 men a
day and still look fresh and clean. “Some of our girls who are students
and come here to hustle, sometimes in the night, squabble with guests
because the man’s libido is too high for them and normally abandon the
(Camerounian and Nigerian) to stay the remaining part of the night at
the open bar, but these man girls hardly complain and they are making
some cool bucks”.
When our reporter interacted with one of them,
who gave her name as Ethel from Mamfe in southern part of Cameroon and
speaks adulterated French and pidgin English, said business brought her
to Calabar and, as such, she has no time for frivolities like
complaining when a customer wants more if he can pay additional money.
“Each shot is N2,000 or N1,500 and, so long as he pays additional money,
I have no issues with him”, she said in French accented pidgin English.
She
said her day starts at 9:00 am where she takes her bath and then heads
to one of the eateries for breakfast. Thereafter, if she gets a call
from any of her customers, she invites him over and business begins. At 1
pm, she goes to a local canteen to eat a launch of eba or rice with
pepper soup and then return to the hotel for a drink with colleagues and
intermittently goes to her room to service clients. “I don’t go out to
hunt for men, they know where to find me or I call them on phone”, she
stated.
A staff of one of the hotels where these girls are lodged
said the love for variety by Nigerian men is what is driving them to
patronise the girls, otherwise there is nothing special about them.
“Most Nigerian men like to show that they have done it with somebody
from outside the country; otherwise our girls are okay and better than
them”, he said.
Speaking on the issue, Mr Jude Ngaji, the Cross
River State Security, as Adviser, said prostitution is morally wrong and
encourages criminal activity and such, the state government will do
everything to stop the practice. “Morally, prostitution is what you find
all over the world. It must be decently done and make sure that don’t
constitute security issue. My concern is that, let criminals not take
advantage of these girls. I am not going to determine the number of
visitors to these sex workers but my major concern is that once these
sex workers become security issue we would stop them”, Ngaji said.