Sex Positive Goddess

In 1973, sex workers in Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna and Enugu formed the Nigerian Union of Prostitutes (NUP) and began seeking official recognition from the government. ▶️The union required members to present health certificates to welfare officers weekly, and new recruits underwent three days of supervised training before they could be fully inducted. ▶️"Even then, a prostitute is not fully initiated. She will have to pay a membership fee of ₦10.5 and agree to pay a yearly fee of ₦4.2," DRUM reported. ▶️The union also barred housewives from joining, accusing them of violating the ethics of the trade by failing to give customers their full attention because of interruptions from their husbands. ▶️But not everyone agreed with its rules. Three months after helping to establish the union, a founding member named Doris resigned. The 27-year-old accused the union's leadership of discrimination by favouring "high-caste" sex workers over "lower caste" ones who were banned from soliciting customers on highways and in open places. ▶️The NUP defended its rules as necessary to protect its members and the profession’s reputation. The union also set minimum prices for its members. For junior members, the price for a round of sex rose from between 20 kobo and 50 kobo to 75 kobo, while an all-night engagement cost ₦5. Office girls, who worked part-time, charged considerably more, earning at least ₦20 for an all-nighter. ▶️According to DRUM, some of the women in the union’s higher ranks had travelled abroad before returning to Nigeria. ▶️The magazine reported, "Others in their group are women who live alone and proclaim to the world that they are 'business' women. But in reality they are business women without an office or shop to sell their wares except their prowess in trading by barter with sex and naira. ▶️"This class of prostitutes uses incomes derived from prostitution to acquire property, boutiques, transportation businesses and some types of contract work. These are the brains behind the formation of NUP." ▶️Despite NUP's efforts, DRUM concluded that official recognition seemed unlikely, and Doris blamed it on "hypocritical Nigerian men who come to us at night times but see us as a menace to society in the day time."