On April 18, 2019 the coordinator of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC), Mr. Umar Shuaibu, gleefully announced that his agency has arrested 34 strippers following a raid of the Caramelo Night Club which is located on plot 630 Cadastral Utako, in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.
In one breath, Shuaibu gave us conflicting reasons for the arrest of the strippers. First, he said the club was raided because of its nuisance value to the neighborhood. Secondly, the AMMC boss said his agency doesn’t tolerate nude dancing at strip clubs. And then Shuaibu said the land on which Caramelo sits should have been a health clinic and not a strip dancing avenue.
Here’s the man in his own words: “In response to security reports and complaints from the residents of area adjoining the location of Caramelo Night Club on plot 630 Cadastral zone B05 along T.O.S Benson Street within Utako District, the relevant authority deployed its officers to carry out surveillance in order to validate the complaints.
“The outcome of the surveillance revealed that the complaints are genuine and real. Please note that the substance of these complaints include: noise nuisance from loud party music, nude/strip dancing club activities, intractable traffic challenge, resulting from uncontrolled patronage to the commercial nightclub within the residential precinct.
“The plot under reference is zoned as Health Clinic on the Utako District Land Use Plan, and in line with this plan, the building plan approval granted was for the development of the health clinic.
“Accordingly, the property was developed as a health clinic, however, the use of the building has been changed to a commercial night club (Caramelo Night Club).”
The Abuja authorities have now made a pastime out of raiding night clubs, street corners, while extorting strippers and sex workers alike. Over 70 women have allegedly been abusedby police officers in Abuja,
Mr. Sunday Shaka, Public Relations Officer of the Social Development Secretariat of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCTA), justifies the raids by saying most of the strippers dress provocatively. How else are strippers and night club goers and revelers expected to dress? In priestly cassocks?
“Some of them dress provocatively, that is half nude. Some of these ladies do not have anything that is covering them. We have graduated to such western life where pornography kind of behaviour will be seen to be roaming the streets of the FCT. That is not allowed.
“Such areas are open to attack. So when people complain about getting attacked in such areas, such a place is raided”, Shaka told Premium Times.
The ambiguous reasons for the strip club raids in Abuja are only one half of the issue. Reports from the capital say the nude dancers and sex workers routinely arrested by the police, now purchase their freedom by offering sex to their captors.
While prostitution is illegal in Nigeria, is the business of strip clubbing also illegal around here? If night clubs are raided for violating property development codes, why are the strippers facing arrests rather than the owners of the business and property? The strippers are only employees who know nothing (Apologies, Jon Snow) about city master plans and all that bullock. Why are they being attacked?
Human Rights activist, Chioma Chuka, says the arrests amount to a violation of the rights of the girls.
“I also heard one of the women was arrested while she was standing with her husband. So why were the men not arrested? Shouldn’t they be focusing on the increased criminality going on in Abuja? I don’t think this is an issue of prostitution. You go into a night club to arrest women and there is no proof they were prostituting. If prostitution is a crime in Nigeria, you have to catch the person in the act before arresting”, Chuka said during an interview with Premium Times.
Another human rights activist, Chika Offor, says “nobody has the right to arrest anybody without investigating what the person has done. As an adult, you are allowed to go to night clubs and anywhere you want to go to.
“Such arrest is an infringement of the women’s fundamental human right and the women have the right to sue.”
We live in a country where roads are death traps, where the public electricity sector has all but collapsed, where nothing works, where criminal gangs are on the loose, where the police looks the other way as bandits and terrorists slay travelers and residents, where more than half the population is poor; and we are more concerned about raiding strip clubs and extorting exotic dancers!!
Once again, our government officials have proven what it means to misplace priorities.
This writer is of the opinion that strip clubbing is no less a business than any other and that strip clubbing and night life in general, contributes in no small way to the Nigerian economy. That those who have chosen to bare it all for a fee and the men who ogle in barely concealed excitement, should be left alone to their consciences. That those strip club businesses who violate property development codes should be warned and then shut down. That nude dancers who are doing their thing in an enclosed space without hurting anyone, should be allowed to carry on because there is no law at this time that criminalizes strip dancing.