Former sex workers find new careers in advocacy and entrepreneurship

Love Etisi is the founder of Good Woman Association (GWA), a civil society organisation based in Lagos that serves people living with HIV and addresses sexual and gender-based violence.

Since its founding in 2015, GWA has empowered more than 85,000 sex workers and young girls across Nigeria in vocational skills.

Etisi, who is now in her early 40s, was a sex worker from the age of 19 to 28. She said poverty drove her to the profession. Growing up she struggled to survive and saw no choice but to embrace sex work after her father died when she was in form five.

“When we were growing up there were lot of things we needed, but there was no one to give them to us, not even body cream,” Etisi said.

Hawking bread and egg rolls around Lagos late into the night exposed her to people who offered her sex work.

At 25, Etisi married one of her clients with whom she later had two children, but her husband died in 2011. Faced with the enormous task of raising children as a single mother, she embraced sex work again, but this time through appointments.

After some time, she secured a job with Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), a non-governmental organisation that took her to South Africa to learn about human rights.

Etisi, now an advocate for sex workers and marginalised people in Lagos, says her organization, GWA, is one way she gives back to society, providing empowerment and support to women and girls in need.

Her story is similar to that of Joy Francis, 29, a frozen food trader who also runs an NGO in Lagos that advocates for sex workers’ rights and supports their maternal health and postpartum care.

Joy is also a single mother of two and a former sex worker. She was introduced to the work at 28 by a friend after she lost her husband in a motor accident and struggled to pay the bills.

“I had to leave the village in Agbo, Delta State, because my late husband’s family was increasingly hostile after his demise. I went to meet my friend in Nasarawa and he told me to go and pay for a room at the brothel and start sex work,” Joy said.

Luck smiled on Joy when she was picked by the NGO Heartland Alliance to work as a volunteer and later offered a job in a health centre. She saved enough money to set up her business and NGO in 2020.

Now, a sex workers’ rights campaigner, Joy is working to expand her business and provide nutritional support to women and girls across Nigeria through her NGO.

In 2022, an estimated 88.4 million people in Nigeria lived in extreme poverty according to the World Bank. That represents 12.9 percent of the global population living in extreme poverty. Experts say this widespread poverty makes sex work an appealing option to earn a living.

Official statistics on the number of sex workers in Nigeria are unavailable due to stigma and legal concerns, but UNAIDS estimated more than 100,000 people provided sex work in Nigeria in 2017.

Lucy Michael, a sex worker in her mid-30s, says that although the work pays her bills, she hopes to stop soon and find an alternative source of income and financial support to set up her own business in women’s thrift wears.

Lucy, a single mum of two children who resides in the Yaba area of Lagos, says she went into sex work about seven years ago after her boyfriend left her and she had no source of income to take care of her kids. She said Nigeria’s poor economic situation has led to a decline in customers.

“I’m ready to start a trade if I see money. Customers are not coming like before. Yesterday, I did not see any,” she said.

Her story is similar to that of Gift, a sex worker in her early 30s and single mother of one who resides in Akwa Ibom State. Even though sex work puts food on her table, she is not happy doing it and prays for the opportunity to use her knowledge in capacity building, health education and hair dressing to enter a new profession.

Read also: Belgium approves law protecting the rights of sex workers, first in the world

Need for capacity building, empowerment

Temitope Musowo, a public policy expert and researcher at the University of Ibadan, says there is need for targeted economic empowerment programs that would improve the economic status of female sex workers in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.

The Sex Workers Association of Nigeria has been organizing income generating vocational training and skill acquisition programmes for 10 years. Programme manager, Ifeanyi Ozo says that after the training, some continue to perform sex work to supplement their income.

“They are adults. We cannot choose what they do. We can only provide an alternative source of income for them,” Ifeanyi said.

Another organisation providing empowerment and support to former sex workers is Blossom Girls Outreach Foundation.

Located in Ondo State in southwestern Nigeria, the Foundation, set up in 2023, provides mentorship opportunities for women and girls who quit sex work.

Founder, Ifeoluwa Ayeni, says that after 6 to 8 months of training in different skills and vocations and financial education the participants are empowered with business grants.

Adebisi Yusuf, professor of Sociology and a gender expert at the Lagos State University, says learning a different trade or a skill that aligns with their interests can help sex workers earn a living in any circumstance they find themselves in the future but that such trainings should come with support grants to ensure continued uptake.

Arbitrary arrest

Nigeria’s constitution does not criminalise sex work but does criminalise the activities of pimps and the ownership of brothels. These laws mainly apply to southern Nigeria. The Penal Code of the Northern part of the country forbids sex work, especially in states that subscribe to Shariah law.

Last October during a demolition exercise in the Obalende part of Lagos State, 12 people were sentenced to eight months imprisonment for offences related to sex work and breach of peace by security agencies.

Many sex workers across Nigeria are demanding more respect and rights. They lament frequent raids, which police say are necessary to reduce criminal activity around brothels.

The Sex Workers Association of Nigeria says they have recently intensified advocacy visits to security agencies to humanise sex workers and make clear that the work they do is legitimate.

Ozo, a programme officer at the organisation, said most sex workers are just trying to survive.

Etisi says the arrest and harassment of sex workers is alarming and is a violation of their human rights and that some police officers falsify accusations against them to extort money.

“A lot of our girls are in prison, but we were just able to bail some of them recently,” she said.

Ebuka Ojukwu, a clinical psychologist at the University of Ibadan, says sex work is a profession with severe challenges and risks, emphasising that society needs more awareness about these challenges to foster empathy rather than judgment.

“Sex workers need solid support systems, access to physical and mental health care that’s free from stigma, and job training programmes,” he said.