The police in Lagos have arrested the
owner of Collabor Hotel, an inn on Ige Street in the Iyana Ipaja area of
the state, for allegedly hosting underage sex workers in the facility.
The owner of the hotel, John Okon, was
apprehended along with the hotel manager, Emmanuel Thomas. Their alleged
accomplice, Monica Ita, was said to be at large.
celebrity news learnt that
operatives of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, acting on
intelligence, busted the hotel on Saturday, March 10, 2018, and caught a
15-year-old primary school leaver allegedly engaging in prostitution.
The girl was said to have been brought
from her village in the eastern part of the country by Ita a few weeks
ago on the pretext that she (Ita) would get her a good job.
Our correspondent gathered that one
Destiny Bassey, 19, and 18-year-old Bright Effiong, who was said to have
been at the inn for three years, were also picked up by the operatives.
During a parade on Tuesday at the Lagos
State Police Command headquarters in Ikeja, the hotel operators admitted
to providing service for the sex workers, except the 15-year-old girl.
The hotel manager, Thomas, said, “It is
true that we provide rooms for sex workers where men visit them. We
collect N5,000 from them (the sex workers) every week. We don’t give
them out to men; they bring their customers themselves.”
The 15-year-old told celebrity news that Ita persuaded her to come to Lagos when she (Ita) saw her playing around the village.
She said, “I finished from primary
school two years ago, but I could not continue my study because my
parents died. Aunty Monica (Ita) came to the village and asked me to
follow her to Abuja. She said she would get me a good job.
“Some days after I got to Lagos, she
took me to the hotel to do prostitution. I had yet to get a room when
the police came to pick us.”
Bold and unabashed, Bassey, who gave her
age as 25, said she slept with five men per day and collected N2,000
from each of her customers.
The Imo State indigene added that joblessness pushed her to the act.
She said, “Nobody forced me into
prostitution. I have been hustling at the hotel for some years now. I
send part of the money I make to my relatives in the village for the
upkeep of my child. I don’t have parents and my husband is dead.
“I sleep with five men every day, so I
make as much as N10,000. I pay the hotel N5,000 every week. I wanted to
save enough money for my education.”
Effiong, an indigene of Calabar, Cross
River State, also said she went to bed with five men daily, adding that
some of her customers paid N1,000.
“I came to the hotel last year and paid N3,000 per week for a room. I did only one round with each customer,” she added.
The Lagos State Commissioner of Police,
Edgal Imohimi, said the command swung into action following a tip-off
that a syndicate was running a prostitution ring.
“A team of FSARS operatives stormed
Collabor Hotel and arrested a 15-year-old girl. She confessed that she
was brought to the hotel some weeks ago by one Monica Ita. The
coordinators of the prostitution ring, Emmanuel Thomas and John Okon,
were also arrested. The case will be charged to court at the completion
of investigation,” the CP added.
