Commercial sex rates crash as business fortunes dwindle in port arena

As fortunes in maritime activities dwindle due to bad roads and other infrastructural decays, business owners are coming up with strategies to remain in business, especially those whose survival depends on their businesses.

The innovative moves do not exclude commercial sex workers around Apapa and Tin Can Island ports arena who also have reduced their charges to attract patronage. A strategy to keep body and soul together.

This platform learnt that when businesses within the areas were rosy, commercial sex workers charged exorbitant rates and their customers did not hesitate to pay because there was more than enough to throw around.

Our source, a truck driver who claimed to have been doing business in the axis for more than twenty years stated that due to drop in cargo throughput and lack of businesses, patronage has gone down by 70 percent.

In taking their destinies in their hands, commercial sex workers in Apapa and Tin Can have put on their thinking caps to attract patronage. One of the strategies is to reduce rate drastically by 70 percent.

They were said to have reduced their prices though based on the type of service the customer requests.

If a customer wants a short- term service called a quickie; that is, to have it beside a parked or spoilt trailer, the type synonymous to truck drivers and their assistants (motor boys), the price of this is said to have come to ridiculous sum of one thousand five hundred naira or less depending on the bargaining power of the customer.

In fact, our source said if the sex hawker hadn’t gotten patronage long before the time, she would not mind anything so far it will afford them a meal.

He added that any customer wishing to be serviced in the room would be ready to part with about two thousand, five hundred naira.

This is superior to the road side quickie hence the higher pay.

Most of these actions often take place from late in the evening to the ungodly hours of the night.

He said, “You don’t know anything yet, business in Apapa and Tin Can starts by evening time when responsible people have closed from work.

“These girls you see around the places where they sell food are not food sellers but waiting to resume work when the night has come.

“I know them and most of them know me because this is where I started as a truck driver before I bought my own trailer which is running up to three now.

“If I call one for you now, she will come but they know the kind of people that always call them,” he said.

Our driver turned owner source said that some big men who are business owners who take hotel rooms in Apapa have the number of some of them and would just invite them to their hotel rooms for overnight service.

According to him, those are the ones that can make around ten thousand naira per night or more depending on the generosity of the client.

“Some of these big men will tell their wives that they cannot be going and coming because of the bad roads.

“They will rent hotel rooms and start all the rubbish and their wives would not know what is keeping them in Apapa.

When asked how he knew so much, he said he had been around long enough to know all those things.

When our correspondent jocularly asked if he had done it before, our source interjected saying God forbid! I am an Alhaji.

Trying to establish his claim, the Alhaji called one pretty girl in her teen, dressed in a short red gown, a high heeled shoe with a bag to match.

After exchanging pleasantries, he motioned our correspondent to take over. When she was asked, “how you dey do am?”

She simply asked, “Wetin you want? You dey joke or mean am? I no dey here to play o. You no be like who want do anything”.

Pretending to be serious, our reporter told her to take him to her place but sensing that the reporter was pulling her leg, she declined further comments despite intervention of the truck owner that introduced him to the sex worker.

A visit to the Tin can first gate especially at night, one would see ladies who wear stern faces in the afternoon suddenly wear persistent smiles to attract men.

Surprisingly, you will see some employees of big organisations within the area. Some of them will tell you “this is where I relax anytime I have an unfinished job in the port”.