Calabar, Cross River State capital, is famous as the home of bevy and succulent women. Their welcoming disposition gives the city a warm and alluring ambience to many a visitor to the city.
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.
By
Emmanuel Unah
