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“Itinerant Gold Mines”: Prostitution in the Cross River Basin of Nigeria, 1930–1950*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Benedict B. B. Naanen
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Extract

Female prostitution in Africa has attracted a few interesting studies since the 1970s (Bujra, 1975, 1977; White, 1980; 1983, 1989; Van Onselen, 1982; Van Heyningin, 1983). Hitherto the subject received casual mention or was at best treated as a minor aspect of broader social categories in studies dealing with African urban conditions (for example, Southall and Gutkind, 1956; Cohen, 1969; Little, 1973). However, even these recent studies concentrate primarily on two cases—Kenya and South Africa. This paper is intended to make a small contribution to the as yet limited knowledge of African prostitution by examining the growth and consequences of prostitution and its relationship to accumulation in the Upper Cross River Basin of Nigeria during the period 1930 to 1950.

Explanations of prostitution vary widely. In many societies the traditional attitude toward the subject, defined by religion and custom, is basically moralistic. Prostitutes are thus seen as deviants, or even criminals, who are unable to exercise control over base instincts. This is a simplistic and unhelpful view which, in the present state of knowledge about the complex phenomenon that prostitution actually is, can hardly stand even elementary analytical scrutiny. What is more, such an attitude tends to put the blame for prostitution squarely on the women without regard to the role of the men who encourage it.

The sale of sexual services thrives because there is a ready market for it. Even Victorian society with all its presumed modesty and “civilized values” had a soft underbelly as far as sexuality was concerned.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , September 1991 , pp. 57 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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Footnotes

*

Versions of this paper were read at the ASA Annual Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, November, 1986, and at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Edmonton, Alberta, May, 1987. I am grateful to Jane Parpart and Luise White for their comments. It has become necessary to protect the identity of certain people mentioned in this paper, some of whom are still alive. Fictitious names are therefore used for all those people from Obubra Division cited in the paper.

References

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