The destitute take over A/Ibom red light zone

Maitama, the popular red light district within the highbrow Ewet Housing Estate, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, has been taken over by abandoned children.

The two-lane drive named after the former military governor of the 29-year-old state, Col. Tunde Ogbeha (rtd), used to play host to prostitutes of different hue, mostly undergraduates from higher institutions in the state, neighbouring Calabar, Cross Rivers State, Abia and Rivers states.

For the new callers to the state, passing along the area on the day time would only give it away as a normal street like any other on the metropolis, because there is nothing to depict the immoral activities that hold sway in the night.

The well paved road demarcated by shrubs and green grass in the middle, accommodates legitimate businesses including drinking pubs, supermarkets, eateries, itinerant fruit vendors and newspaper sellers.

“All of these legal businesses converged on the street during the day, but from the evening hours, the beautiful street would lose its innocence to night crawlers and easy girls”, notes a liquor dealer, popularly called Mama Show.

The street sandwiched by two popular night clubs – Second Baze and the Millionaires’ Club, some few meters away, combined to give pep to the red light zone.

From the evening hours, scantily clad ladies walk unhurriedly to take their vantage positions on strategic spots along the two-lane driveway.

In the wee hours of the night, the easy ladies would frolic with their randy patrons, and amid alcohol and abuse of hard substances, the whole street becomes littered with used condoms, cigarettes and Indian hemp.

“We sweep all manner of things here every morning including used condoms and other substances. Sometimes you are lucky to pick forgotten wallets and stray cash,” Helen Usanga, one of the shop tenders told Nigerian Tribune.

“Sometimes there are fights over minor disagreements on agreed fee not paid after the prostitutes would have rendered service, or complaints by their patronisers that their wallets have been stolen by the girls hired. Sometimes you see blood patches and torn clothes resulting from the fights or used tissues”, another lady, Mfonobong Eyo, who offered to sweep the road for the state government for a monthly fee of N10,000, corroborated Usanga’s story.

Worried by the development, the state government, Nigerian Tribune gathered, had since the era of former governor Godswill Akpabio, been trying to dislodge the prostitutes.

Then Commissioner for Information, Mr. Census Ekpu, whose house boarders the red light zone, had pushed to no avail to evict the easy girls from the area, saying members of his household and the entire neighbourhood were always disturbed and made uncomfortable by the blaring noise of loud speakers from the clubs.

The wife of then Governor Akpabio, Mrs. Ekaette Unoma, who preached against amorous lifestyles of the ladies, had launched a campaign through the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Welfare, for them to turn a new leaf for government empowerment, also failed to appeal to the girls to shun the trade.

But the current administration of Governor Udom Emmanuel has succeeded in dislodging the girls after several efforts by the governor’s wife, Martha, to lure them into vocational jobs, failed.

It was gathered that the government had to resort to the use of force to quit the unwanted tenants from continuous desecration of the Tunde Ogbeha Drive, and to give dignity to womanhood.

Few months ago, the police stormed the place and rounded up about 40 prostitutes including some married men, women and some NYSC corps members who came to celebrate their end-of-service year along the red light area.

Though the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Ms. Cordelia Nwawe, had explained that the raid was based on a tip-off that the prostitutes were in the habit of harbouring armed robbers and drug dealers, Nigerian Tribune learnt the operation was deliberately designed by government to rid the area of easy girls and their bad influence.

After sorting to determine the real culprit, the suspects were charged to court, and Nwawe had said those found culpable would be made to face the full wrath of the law.

Few months after the police scare, the area has been deserted by the call girls, giving way to abandoned children.

Nigerian Tribune stumbled on them still sleeping on the open street by 7:30 am, and they relived their tales of woe.

Fighting back tears, a teenager aged nine, who gave his name as Effiong, said he was thrown out of the house by his stepmother in Oron, who labeled him a witch.

“My mother left my father when he got married to a second wife and travelled to Lagos, since then she has not come back. My stepmother accused me of bringing misfortunes to the family and always reported me to my father. Two of them would beat me to the point of sending me away”, he lamented.

Another teenage girl, who said she had been abused by some street vigilante during the late night hours, fled the house “when the old man I was staying with died and there was nothing to eat again”.

Aniefiok, who hails from Ikot Abasi Local Government Area, said she had to move to Uyo, where a good samaritan gave her N1,000 to start sachet water business.

“I used to sleep at the Ibom Plaza, but when bad boys started disturbing me, I had to move to this place because they do businesses here throughout the night,” she said.

Incidences of abandoned children being labeled as child witches and wizards have been rife in the state, forcing former governor Akpabio to enforce the domestication of the Child Rights Law (CRL) in the state in 2008.

The law was designed to check erring parents who abandoned their children to roam the streets during school hours.

Akpabio also announced the introduction of the free education policy from primary to junior secondary school (JSS), to compel poor parents to send their children to school, instead of giving them a bad name in order to send them away to the streets.

But checks by Nigerian Tribune reveal that the law, since it was passed by the House of Assembly and accented to by Akpabio, has remained a lame duck.