John Okon, the owner of Collabor Hotel, an inn on Ige Street, Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, has been arrested along with the hotel manager, Emmanuel Thomas, for allegedly hosting underage sex workers in the facility.
It was gathered that operatives of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, acting on intelligence, busted the hotel on Saturday, March 10, 2018, and caught a 15-year-old primary school leaver allegedly engaging in prostitution.
The girl was said to have been brought from her village in the eastern part of the country by one Monica Ita, a few weeks ago, on the pretext that she (Ita) would get her a good job.
Oone Destiny Bassey, 19, and 18-year-old Bright Effiong, who was said to have been at the inn for three years, were also picked up by the operatives. The hotel operators admitted to providing service for the sex workers, except the 15-year-old girl.
The hotel manager, Thomas, said, “It is true that we provide rooms for sex workers where men visit them. We collect N5,000 from them (the sex workers) every week. We don’t give them out to men; they bring their customers themselves.”
In an interview with Punchng, the 15-year-old revealed that Ita persuaded her to come to Lagos when she (Ita) saw her playing around the village. She said, “Some days after I got to Lagos, she took me to the hotel to do prostitution. .
I had yet to get a room when the police came to pick us.” On her part, bold and unabashed, Bassey, 25, said: “Nobody forced me into prostitution. I have been hustling at the hotel for some years now.
I send part of the money I make to my relatives in the village in Imo State, for the upkeep of my child. I don’t have parents and my husband is dead. I sleep with five men every day, so I make as much as N10,000.
I pay the hotel N5,000 every week. I wanted to save enough money for my education.” Effiong, from Calabar, said she went to bed with five men daily, adding that some of her customers paid N1,000 and she pays N3,000 per week for a room.
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