It is common knowledge that prostitution in Abuja was banned by the former minister of the FCT, Senator Bala Mohammed, who at the time gave prostitutes an ultimatum to leave the nation’s capital or face the wrath of the law. But the number of prostitutes in the FCT has doubled since then.
When Mallam Nasir el-Rufai was minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), he once said that Abuja was not designed to accommodate the poor.
That probably is why the lower class device ways to survive in the city and one wonders if that was the reason why Aunty Chinwe and Madam Shakara lured innocent girls, who are barely 14 and 16 years old, into prostitution after promising them better lives if they followed them to the seat of government.
Luck ran out on the traffickers recently when the Utako police raided one of the brothels they usually supply the teenage girls to.
A team of policemen from the Utako Police Division, led by the DPO, Chief Superintendent of Police, Patrick Daaor, raided Davies Hotel, a popular and lively brothel in Lugbe, Airport Road, and rescued 11 girls aged between 14 to 16 years.
The police also arrested the manager of the brothel, identified by the police as Mr. Chukwudi Nweke.
Aso Chronicle gathered that the arrest was effected after one of the trafficked girls, Precious Daniels, reported to the police.
Abuja is a city with its own unique attraction - with the possibility of a better life.
For some, these dreams come true easily, for others it maybe not. Facts abound that most people, especially ladies, throng into the city with dreams and aspirations of a better life, only to find out that there are no free meals in Abuja and any uncle who would want to part with a little change will also want his bed to be oiled.
Soon, the debauched side of urban life presents itself as a viable alternative after some time of fruitless search for the good of the land.
Eighteen-year-old Delta born Precious Daniel said she decided to expose the traffickers to the police because she abhors prostitution.
She said before Aunty Chinwe lured her to Abuja, she had been serving in a restaurant in Onitsha. She said sometime last month, Aunty Chinwe entered the restaurant and requested for a soft drink.
“I gave her the drink and she looked at my legs admiringly. Then she requested to know how much I make monthly from the restaurant. I told her I was making N10,000 monthly.
She said she would pay me N30,000 if I followed her to Abuja to do the same job I was doing. She also promised to give me free luxurious house, make my hair and buy me clothes. Excitedly I agreed because I had longed to come to Abuja for a very long time,” she said.
Miss Daniel said she was kept in a hotel at Onitsha for three days and she was well taken care of, and on the fourth day, they arrived Abuja and she was taken straight to Davies Hotel Lugbe, where Aunty Chinwe handed her over to Madam Shakara for appraisal.
She said she was taken aback when the two women told her that she was brought to Abuja to hustle and when she asked her what that meant, they told her that she would be prostituting.
“I was shocked because I followed Aunty Chinwe with high hopes, but prostitution was not one of the reasons why I came to Abuja.
I grew up without a father figure but I have always taken care of myself and I had never slept with any man for money, which I am not ready to do anyway,” she said with pride.
“The following day, the manager of the brothel was brought into my room by Madam Shakara.
She said the manager has to sleep with me first, after which, I would be given N1,000 and I vehemently refused. That was where my agony started. Because I refused to sleep with men, they started abusing me.
I was locked up, tortured and called all sorts of names. When I could not do what they wanted, they decided it was time for me to go back to Onitsha. But Aunty Chinwe asked me to pay her back all the expenses she made on me.
She collected my phone, my N3,000 and my ATM card but I didn’t care because I wanted to be free from them,” she added.She said she was taken to Ifesinachi at Utako and the trafficker went and bought bus ticket for her to return to Onitsha.
“After handing the ticket to me, she promised to kill me any other time she saw me,” she added.
She said she wondered what would become of the other girls if she kept quiet about the degradation they were facing every day, satisfying the sexual orgies of the old men that thronged the hotel daily.
Daniel said immediately Chinwe left her at the bus station, she decided to speak with someone about the problem and she went to meet the manager of the park.
She added that after narrating her ordeal to the manager, the manager immediately took her to Utako Police Station and the police at Utako, led by the divisional police officer immediately swooped on the hotel and the girls were rescued while the manager of the hotel was arrested but the traffickers escaped before the police arrived.
From uptown districts of Abuja like Asokoro, Maitama, Wuse, Garki, Jabi and Utako down to the satellite suburbs of Karu, Kubwa, Lugbe, Dei-Dei and Idu-Karmo etc, commercial sex trade continues to flourish in spite of measures by the previous ministers to clamp down on its practitioners.
The rescued underage girls looked young, beautiful and innocent but they had been coerced or enticed into the grimy business of prostitution.
And for such young girls like those, it was always a marvel while they chose to enslave their bodies and minds to prostitution while they could have toed the line of Precious.
Susan from Akwa Ibom State lied that she was 20 years old when our reporter enquired about her age but looking at her, one would know that she is between the ages of 13 and 14. She said that her poor condition made her to join the ‘hustling business.
In her words, “When my mother was sick, I had nobody to go to. I wanted to do any menial job to get some money. As I was walking down our street that morning, I saw Madam Shakara who stopped me and asked me why I was walking and crying.
I told her my story; she told me that she was going to help me only if I followed her to Abuja. I ran back home, packed few of my clothes, told my mother that I would make sure that I get some money for her upkeep no matter what.”
She said Madam Shakara brought her to Abuja, and informed her that she was coming to hustle and that it was a stranger who first had sex with her that took her ‘priced’ virginity.
But she said she had no regrets as she was able to fulfill the promises she made to her mother that she would fend for her.
Another girl who called herself Funke also stated that nobody forced her into prostitution and that when Aunty Chinwe brought her to Abuja, she knew what she was coming to do.
“If I don’t hustle, how will I get money to take care of myself and my family? I need to hustle and make ends meet. It is my body; I could as well do with it whatever I wanted,” she retorted.
The Utako divisional police officer, said he acted immediately he got the information because he is a father, a brother and a husband and he wouldn’t want to see any female dehumanized.
“Some people are disadvantaged but it is not proper for anyone to take advantage of their situation and reduce them to nothingness.
We are seriously looking for Madam Shakara and Aunty Chinwe who are on the run but we will track them down. We are going to transfer them to Force headquarters as soon as we get signal to do so but at the moment, investigations would continue,” he said.
He also said that he is working with Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) to stamp out this criminal practice and to dislodge prostitutes from Utako and its environs.
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