The Road to Italy: Nigerian Sex Workers at Home and Abroad

I once nearly crashed a hire car on the road from Siena to Florence. I would have pled temporary insanity, caused by the sudden appearance around a corner of a flock of beautiful black African women dressed in bras and hot pants. . . . They were, of course, prostitutes, some of the 1,000 ¹ young Nigerians ² reckoned to be working in Italy, servicing the estimated nine million Italian men who pay for sex. The girls supply what, it must be presumed, the men cannot get at home—anal sex—and the going rate is [pounds sterling] 150, good money. ³

With these unsettling words, Andrew Billen of the New Statesman weaves a tapestry of images that throw light on a new and disturbing trend in the Nigerian commercial sex industry—the omnipresent overseas or international sex worker who, in her eternal state of undress, leaves very little to the imagination. It is this same breed of sex worker that affords her European client services, the likes of which could hardly have been imagined, let alone spoken, a decade or two ago in Nigeria. She is a new-age prostitute who elevates "[her] customer [to] 'king.'" ⁴ So who is this woman and why does she do what she does? The key to understanding who and why, I argue, can be found deeply buried in the past, but it is also firmly rooted in the present as well. She is an emblem of tradition-al notions of sex and sexuality as well as an inherently corrupt and collapsing nation. Her story begins not in the streets of Siena or Florence, but in rural and urban Nigeria, ⁵ canvassing all of the "junction towns" ⁶ in-between.

In an attempt to navigate the contours of this uniquely Nigerian institution of commercial sex work, I provide two short case studies—various in ethnicity (the Igbo and Edo), locality (rural Nigeria and international prostitution), and in the very way the practitioners define and construct their work. The story that emerges, I argue, situates the Nigerian sex worker variously as independent and autonomous; interdependent and, at times, completely dependent on her new age madam (boss, if male), "mama," or "Mama Lola," as the case may be.

"If a woman does not have a husband or a boyfriend, she can become a friend to her mother's second bed" —A Study in Rural "Prostitution"

This study of rural prostitution takes us to the northernmost region of eastern Nigeria—to a group called the Nsukka Igbo. In an attempt to coax new interpretations from old evidence, I offer a searching analysis of the ways in which this group of Igbo women defined and constructed their trade—that which made it uniquely Nsukka. To this end, consider the words employed by Nsukka people to denote a prostitute. These were varied and seem to have changed over time. Whether or not these names evolved successively or were used interchangeably or concurrently is open to further investigation, but here is what we know. One of the words used was mgboto ⁷ —thiscaptured the ease with which these women were believed to strip, disrobe, and go naked. Ikweli exemplified the "I don't care" disposition—the "sassy mama with an attitude" sentiment. A third term, okuenu, translated literally into "high or blazing fire." The okuenu and ikweli could "not care less," were brazen, up-front, had an "in your face" attitude; in other words, fa walu anya—they did not listen to reason.

Adana was another descriptive term which articulated the fact that women of this sort did not get married, but entertained their patrons from "the comforts of [their] home[s]." ⁸ The adana's clients, though few, were regular (which suggested forging a relationship), and were often treated to palm wine, kai kai (undistilled alcohol), cigarettes, and a wide variety of provisions. The adana normally set up a small...