Many undergraduates are smiling to the bank, courtesy of a booming business called “pimping” on campus. GILBERT ALASA (400-Level Foreign Languages, University of Benin) examines the new trend in campus prostitution.
They cruise about in posh cars while their colleagues cramp into rickety campus shuttles. They live large on campus even though the source of their wealth cannot be openly discussed. From the comfort of their off-campus hostels, they negotiate high-profile deals with powerful personalities while their mates sweat it out in stuffy libraries in school.
Welcome to the world of campus pimps and whores. From time immemorial, prostitution has been a thriving business. Even on campuses, it is big time business. Now, the trade has taken a new dimension. As the money-spinning business grows, so are the players increasing by the day. Among them is a network of middlemen known as pimps.
Campus pimps are socially-inclined students who explore their gregarious appeal as a tool for gathering female students to warm the beds of the well-heeled in the society.
CAMPUSLIFE investigations revealed that the pimps could be “party-riders” who keep tab of social events on campus or student-politicians who exploit their relationship with those in power. The big men could also be affluent private sector operators or cult heroes who entice their admirers with financial rewards.
Campuses are blessed with a sizeable number of young women, ready and willing to be night companions of these wealthy people, who may be politicians, top civil servants and business magnates. Campus pimps come in handy as intermediaries between the big men and their aristos – a parlance for student-prostitutes.
Among students of a federal university in the Southsouth, the story of four female students is still fresh. CAMPUSLIFE gathered that a member of a popular political party was in town for last-minute campaign during last year’s elections. In the evening, the weather was cold because of a downpour earlier in the day. To keep the guests warm, four female undergraduates were drafted to the politician and his three-man entourage. But one of the girls played a fast one on the men as she made away with the politician’s money. The story is being told till today on that campus.
In Edo State, campus pimps are regular faces at popular hang-outs in high-brow areas of Benin City. Such spots include Ritz Carlton, Hexagon, Debis Kitchen, Swallow, Time-out, Royal Marble, West View, Yak Hotel near the Federal Polytechnic, Auchi (AUCHI POLY) and Best Western.
When patronage is low, some of the girls take to stripteasing for a fee to cover operating costs incurred by the pimps. “You don’t expect me to fuel my car or burn up cash on taxi and phone calls organising babes without getting returns at the end. In fact, some of these yeye (stupid) girls want to be paid per night,” fumed a pimp who is a drop-out from a popular private university in Edo State.
Investigation revealed that many aristos now bypass pimps because of their haughtiness. In a chat on a social networking site, a pimp who uses Juiceman as username, found nothing offensive in his profession. Rather, he describes himself as a smart fellow who uses his social skills to make money.
“Clearly, I am not a robber, terrorist or Yahoo-yahoo boy (Internet fraudsters). I am not even close to most of the guys involved in bunkering or kidnapping. I am just a young man trying to key into the philosophy of using what I have to get what I want,” Juiceman wrote.
He is not alone in this attempt to rationalise has position. According to his counterpart, who is in the organising team of a popular annual show at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), the pimp business is no vice as it only complements an existing social problem.
“For me, there is no justification for criticising what I do to see myself through school. I am neither the man who sleeps with the girls nor am I the girls who chose to sleep around. After all, these men are proud to steal from our collective treasury. So, we just have to squeeze them to reclaim our stolen fortunes,” he said.
For a beauty queen and 300-Level Insurance student of UNILAG, Violet Olisah, the pimps and the aristos are culpable. “The pimping mess should be utterly condemned. The pimp is as guilty as the promiscuous girls. Many destinies have been cut in their primes through the activities of these pimps. The act must be stopped.”
On profitability, the door swings both ways for the pimp and the sex-hawker. Most times, the pimp gets his compensation from the “client” and agrees to reimburse the girls after the sex romp. Other times, the “client” demands to personally remunerate the aristo while paying off the pimp straight-away.
But Oyewole Ajibade (not his real name), 200-Level Philosophy, Ekiti State University (EKSU), said the later-payment method often put the pimp at a disadvantage. “When a client pays you and the aristo separately, the pimp stands to lose. But when you are paid both your charges and that of the girl in question, you hold the edge of the knife as to how the spoil is shared. So, it is better that way,” Oyewole quipped.
A magazine exclusively reported the activities of a pimp, who organised two female students of a university in the Southwest for a former Minister. After an orgy sex romp in a five-star hotel in Abuja, the girls and the pimp were handsomely rewarded “for a job well-done.” This shows that politicians are culpable in the decadence.
In a chat with our correspondent, a Lagos-based legal practitioner, Mr David Umoru, lamented the non-implementation of the extant law barring such trade. “Prostitution, as a social malady, has its effect on the society. Despite the fact that there are legal frameworks that bar the illicit trade, government and its agencies are paying lip service to stopping the trade.”
Culled from CampusLife