prostitutes, but what she - and those she is trying to help - do to
make a living is illegal and frowned upon by many in the country.
Abraham is not only proud of her profession but is also campaigning to
ensure that prostitution is legalised and that sex workers are
respected in Africa's most populous country.
The 48-year-old has led a couple of protests in Lagos, Nigeria's
commercial capital, demanding the rights of prostitutes in a country
where sex vendors suffer physical harm at the hands of their punters.
Under the auspices of different organisations, scores of prostitutes
marched on the streets of Lagos, chanting provocative slogans.
This boldness is unprecedented, and the protesters carried their
signature red umbrellas and T-shirts with the inscription "Sex work is
work, we need our rights."
"We are tired of dying in silence," Abraham, who heads the Nigerian
chapter of African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA), told Al Jazeera. "We
want to be able to practise our profession with pride like every other
person. We want an end to name-calling and stigmatisation. We are sex
workers and not asawo [a Yoruba derogatory name for prostitutes]."
Sex work, said Abraham, is normal work and that there are "sex workers
everywhere under one form of disguise or the other". "[The] government
should stop criminalising our work," said the woman who is also the
president of the Women of Power Initiative (WOPI), a non-governmental
organisation established to advance the cause of sex work in Nigeria.
Although Nigeria has posted impressive economic growth, overtaking
South Africa to become Africa's largest economy, unemployment remains
widespread and many Nigerian women have ended up working as
prostitutes in part because they cannot find work.
Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in April that no fewer than
5.3 million youths are jobless, and the World Bank last year put the
number of Nigerians living in destitution at 100 million.
PUNCH
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