I know that some girls go into prostitution because of poverty. So if the government can partner some Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to train the girls to acquire skills, that can help them live better lives. It is important that government finds out the problem with these girls. Engage psychologists and sociologists to talk to the girls and find out why they went into prostitution in the first place. It is not proper for government to just say we don’t want prostitutes on the streets and then forcefully take them off the streets. They are human beings too, so they should be treated civilly. If you just force them off the streets, they will relocate to other cities and towns and the problem will not be solved in the long run.
What should government do to get call girls off the streets of Abuja
Secondly, there are places these prostitutes hang out. So the government should talk top the owners of the hotels or whatever place it might be called, about the social menace of harbouring prostitutes. If you don’t do that you still find prostitutes all over the place. So it has to be an organized programme that can be sustainable in the long run. It is not just sending the police after them.
Another thing is the men should caution themselves because if the men don’t patronize the girls, definitely they won’t be out there looking for customers. Even people in top government offices patronize them. If buyers don’t go to the market to buy, sellers will not sell and that means there will be no market without willing buyers.
Ebiloma Hassan, Builder: The best thing government can do is to organize training for the prostitutes. After the training, the government should provide funds for them to start businesses in the trades they are trained in. It could be tailoring, hairdressing or any skill that could offer them gainful employment.
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Besides, from a religious point of view, prostitution is a sin, it is an immoral act so it is not good for anybody to have it as her means of livelihood. So it is both a social and a religious problem. Nigeria is a country known for religiosity, so prostitution should not have been a problem if truly we had imbibed the tenets of our religions. So to take prostitutes off the streets, you have to tackle the problem from the roots, both religiously and socially.
Patience Timothy, Student: For government to take prostitutes off the streets, it has to give them jobs to do. Most of them prostitute because they are unemployed. So if government is serious about chasing prostitutes away, then it most have something for them to do. Even if it is white collar jobs, let the government engage them, and for those who do not have skills, they should be trained to acquire skills.
Also, our religious institutions too have a role to play here because if they had helped in building a moral society, then prostitution wouldn’t be a headache to government so much so that it will give an ultimatum to prostitutes to leave the streets. So there is a big question hanging over our religious institutions. What kind of families are they helping to mould? What kind of society are they helping to build? So to reduce the level at which prostitutes swarm our streets looking for customers, we all have to ask some fundamental questions and be able to provide answers to them. Personally if I have a sister that is a prostitute I will discourage her from it.
Josephine Tule, Graduate: I think the government should set up a committee that will involve people who will investigate to know why the girls go into prostitution. The investigators can go out on the streets, take the girls to some nice places and ask why they prostitute. After that government can begin a rehabilitation process for the ones that genuinely want to live decent lives. To a large extent some of the girls resort to prostitution because of financial difficulties. Everybody knows that our economy is harsh and those who are not patient and resilient become desperate and in their desperation they do anything at all to weather the harsh economic situation. So government has a whole lot of issues to address, especially the economy before it can begin to look at social issues like prostitution.
Besides, the religious bodies too have a challenge here. It is also a fact that prostitution is a moral issue and if it is prevalent in our society, then the two main religions might not just be having impact on the lives of the people. In a nutshell, government and religious bodies have to come together and enlighten families about the risks involved in prostitution. It is unfortunate that most parents don’t ask their daughters where and how they get some expensive materials. It starts from theaz family. If your girl of 17 years or 18 years comes home from school and you see her with an expensive wrist watch and you don’t ask her where and how she got it, it means you have encouraged her to prostitute already.
Mr Aliyu Daganci Manbe, Sociologist: People circumscribe to prostitution because they are denied the basic fundamentals of life. They don’t have access to education, they don’t have food to eat, they don’t have access to healthcare. So prostitution is a fallout of bad governance and corruption. It is not a moral issue as many people may be tempted to think. It is basically a social ill and for government to take prostitutes off the streets, the government must be seen as a welfare institution and not an institution for amassing wealth meant for the welfare of the entire citizenry. The girls who engage in prostitution are also human beings and for them to abandon prostitution they have to be given the opportunity to participate in the economy. They will have to acquire skills, they will have to get education and be able to meet financial needs with money earned through decent means. But as it is now, it will be difficult to take prostitutes off the streets because of the brazen corruption going on in government. Unless there is social security for every citizen of Nigeria, prostitutes will still remain on the streets and government will only succeed in harassing them.
Shehu Sani, Civil Rights Activists: The Nigerian elite or political class is cruel and deceptive in their approach to national issues and they are ridiculously hypocritical. They want to make Abuja a paradise where there are no vices, no crimes and where the streets are made of gold, where there will be 24 hours electricity to enable them enjoy their privileges, but the fact remains that you can’t make other places hell and enjoy paradise in Abuja. The 36 states of the country are impoverished by local government chairmen, state governors, ministers, national assembly members who all live in Abuja.
So, you cannot impoverish other Nigerians and then come to Abuja, thinking that you will live in peace and felicity. Prostitution, crimes, social violence are all bye- products of unjust socio economic order perpetrated in all parts of the country. That is why in Abuja today, you cannot move around in an expensive car without fear of the car being snatched. They have created parks and gardens where nobody goes there for fear of assassination or robbery attack. They hardly sleep in their own houses built with the billions stolen from the public treasury. So it is what they created that is coming to chase them in their paradise.
Therefore, prostitutes cannot vacate Abuja because they are by-products of a collapsed system, they are products of collapsed economy, and they are functions of failed state and failed leadership that have come to live with us. The problem of Abuja is not prostitution, but about treasury looters, is about plunderers, is about irresponsible public office holders who have milked the country dry, have created atmosphere of fear and have made live unbearable for the citizens. As a human right activist, I believe that these prostitutes are products of a morally degenerated society which we can still check by doing the right thing because some of the prostitutes are university students who cannot afford to pay their school fees.
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