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

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.