…As hawkers now shun Lagos customers over deadly virus
Commercial sex workers, who ply their trade in Ado Ekiti are currently angry. They are angry because the dreaded Ebola disease, which has spread to Lagos, is spoiling business for them.
The dreaded Ebola virus came into the country through a Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, who has since died in a Lagos hospital. Two more persons, a Nigerian nurse, who treated the Liberian, and an official of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have also died after being infected by Sawyer.
Checks by Daily Sun in about six brothels in Ado Ekiti revealed that commercial sex workers in the capital city now literally drive away would be customers from Lagos and any prospective client that reveals he is from Lagos.
In the same way, patrons of call girls in Ekiti now ask about the recent movement of any of the prostitutes before choosing who to do business with. This is to find out and avoid those who might have gone to Lagos.
A young lady, who gave her name as Lovie Baby, is a pretty commercial sex worker in a brothel in Ojumose area of Ado Ekiti. The Akwa Ibom State-born prostitute told the reporter, after consuming a few bottles of beer on the reporter’s bill, that since the Ebola outbreak in Lagos, many of her colleagues, including herself, now run away from customers from the nation’s commercial capital.
“Bros, dis life no too sweet o, but no one wants to die. Nowadays, if any man comes to meet me and says he is from Lagos, I will run o! Because I don’t want to get that Ebola virus o!” she said.
Chichi, another sex worker in a brothel at Okeyinmi area of Ado Ekiti, told the reporter that she was a student of a tertiary institution in Kano. She said she came all the way from Kano State where she lives with her parents to do some ‘runs’ – a term for part-time prostitution – with her friends and sisters in Ado Ekiti. Asked why she ran from school, she said the school was currently on strike.
Chichi told the reporter that her friends and sisters, who have been on ground and understand the trade better in the Ado Ekiti area, have warned her vehemently to beware of men, who claim to be from Lagos, as she could contract the Ebola virus from them.
Said she: “Although I know that men from Lagos pay good money for sex, my people here have warned me not to let them touch me, let alone ‘do business’ with me. I don’t want to die now, so I am not attending to any Lagos man now. I prefer the local people. When Ebola is no more, then we can start thinking of playing with men from Lagos.”
Another commercial sex worker, who wouldn’t have anything to do with any man from Lagos is Joy. The young lady, who claims she is from Benin, Edo State capital, operates from a guest house along Iworoko Road, Ado-Ekiti. She was quite frank about the Ebola scare. She said she had actually nursed the thought of leaving Ekiti for Lagos in search of greener pastures in her line of business, adding, however, that she was already changing her mind now that Ebola is in Lagos.
“You see, I wanted to leave this place for Lagos but this Ebola problem is causing me to have a change of mind.”
She said men in Ekiti State were not too generous to commercial sex workers like her. “I am really suffering here because of that. But I have recently been turning down requests for visits to Lagos by my clients there because you don’t know who has it and who doesn’t, since they say mere kissing or body contact transmits the disease,” she said as she puffed on a stick of cigarette.
But some others are hardly bothered about the disease. Although, they shrink at the mere mention of Ebola, they wish and pray that they would never be visited by the disease.
“I don’t know about that kind of a thing and I believe it will not happen to me. But my business goes on with any man that can pay me well,” Chinwe, another sex worker said.
However, a post on the Ebola virus on the social media, credited to Joyce Akpata, Director-General, Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce, and entitled: US Department Ebola Alert, gave further hints on preventing measures and steps to take on the disease. It reads in part: “Our medical specialists remind everyone that they should be following the guidelines from the Centre for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation.”
According to the post, a major reservoir for Ebola is the fruit bat. Transmission to humans is thought to originate from infected bats or primates that have become infected by bats. Undercooked infected bat and primate (bush) meat transmits the virus to humans and human to human transmission is only achieved by physical contact with a person, who is acutely and gravely ill from the Ebola virus or their body fluids. Transmission among humans is almost exclusively among caregiver family members or health care workers, tending to the very ill. The virus is easily killed by contact with soap, bleach, sunlight, or drying.
But for most commercial sex workers in Ekiti, it’s better to avoid clients from Lagos. “How do you determine a man that is suffering from Ebola? My brother, it’s better to keep away from any man you know is from Lagos, at least, for now,” Joy said.
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