RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Male Nigerian Undergrads Turning to Prostitutes

[bo...@boladauda.com]

Dear All,   Hurrah!!! Happy Good Friday!!! Be careful what you wished or asked for, because you might just get it. I was wondering if I would get three good news in a day, and here comes the third.The first was Dr Adeyemi Johnson's heart procedure; the scond was Toyin Falola's cheering news about Obama's visit to Africa. And here, Shola Adenekan is bold enough to ask us to talk about homosexuality.   First let me share with you my personal confessions, hoping that it will help put things in perspective! A friend once chastised me years ago that whoever has not faced danger, calls himself a courageous man! The Yoruba rendition is sweeter: Eni ija o ba, npera re, l'okunrin! Years later, I faced a terrible fincancial crisis. And since I know from my professional training as a Life and Business Coach that there is no lack of resources but lack of resourcefulness; and since one elderly woman in my village once justified prostitution. She told me, she could not sit on money and be complaining of lack of money; I became creative: I thought and seriously considered prostitution.   Surprisingly, it's a lucrative business with many areas of spcialities. There are books and memoirs on the subject. They form intersting read. One of the best is Eleven Minutes by Paulo Cholo, and another is Call me Elizabeth.   In my case it was not with other men but I thought there must be women who want to have sex and will be willing to pay me to have sex with them. I investigated, did my feasibility studies, and found out it is actually a lucrative business. Regrettably I had to give up the idea not on moral ground but because I was almost sixty years old. I could hardly cope with once a week, not to think of two to three times a night. And if you are really good at the game of sex, which I think I was, you could have many calls per night.   Interestingly, in my conversation with some respectable women and men in United Kingdom, I later found out that prostitution is like suicide. Most people have considered it at one point in their life. Many people never carried out their desire to commit suicide just as many never carried out prostitution to resolve their financial crisis. Now let's get serious. Finance is the may driving force, and Mark Twain was right to say, The lack of money is the root of all evil. And this brings me to the more philosophical meaning of prostitution.   There is more to prostitution than selling your body for money. Prostitution truly means exchange of your service (sometimes soul, spirit, mind (intellect), and body) for social trappings of position, accolades and whatever. Fear and insecurity often drive people to do things for material gains and money. How many of us are in jobs that kill our soul and spirit, but we could not resign because we have family to feed, mortgage to pay, etc? How many of us compromise our principles to keep our jobs, soio-economic positions, etc. Whatever makes it compelling for you to compromise who you are is prostitution. So, what is going on on the Nigerian campus is more than simply about homosexuality and sexual orientation. It's a wider symptom of the state of the Nigerian political economy.   My second personal confession is that I thought I was liberal and that I wasn't a racist until my son fell in love and proposed to marry a white English woman. Many of us academics are really academic when we study and write about social issues. The test of our maturity and grip with realty is when we are faced with the challenges in our persona life. The performances of Wole Soyinka and Tai Solarin of blessed memory in public offices are examples of the gap between theory and reality. We're in a global village and information age. The more we accept the reality of our time the more we will be comfortable with what we consider to be abominable, and omens and signs of the end of the world. The world is not coming to an end, and if does the good news is their will be no CNN or BBC to report it. Lord Keynes, the classical economist, once remarked that the whole idea of 'in the long run' is deceitful because in the long run we are all dead. Now I will like to end with good news.   Many people who think homosexuality is the end of the world are only replaying the broken records. Religion is the opinion of the poor and the merchants of fear who trade on the vulneralbility of the ignorant. Hopefully, when they get out of the influence and trance of their drug they will realise that no genuine father or parent wants to condemn any of his children to the type of hell Christianity and Islam want us to believe. I have never seen any artist who will like to get rid of his creative work in the same manner Christianity and Islam will want us to believe. There are over ten billion people on earth and if Christianity and Islam believe that they were all descendants of Adam and Eve, I wonder if they are are speaking on behalf of God to say God will throw more than eight in ten of his/her children to hell! I think many will be surprised to find some of us on the right hand of God.   For those of you who may be afraid of your fate with God, may I leave you with this assuring story: A Pastor died and got to heaven. God gave him a challet in the Boys Quarters of heaven. A few days later, a Taxi Driver died, and when he got to God, he was welcome with a great party and allocated a well-decorated Guest Room, close to God's bedroom. The Pastor demand God to justify his unfair treatment of his chosen servant. God said, the driver deserved a better place in heave because hs reckless driving on Sundays and Sabbaths brought more peole to him than the Pastor's boring sermon that sent more peole to sleep. Only God knows who is truly seving IT (I really don't know if God is a male of female!) And do't ask me the source of the story. God revealed it to me to console me and to make me feel good of my invaluable seven-year service to humanity as a taxi driver in the UK!   Best wishes.

 Bola Dauda

Managing Director

Early Years' Education Foundation and Academy (EYEFA)

'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance'

 

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Male Nigerian Undergrads Turning
to Prostitutes
From: Shola Adenekan <sholaa...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, July 10, 2009 4:46 am
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

Hi Folks,

 

Interesting story, which I think we all need to talk about. I know that for many this is a taboo, but not talking about it won't make homosexuality go away.

Instead of our politicians, pundits, holier-than-thous, church leaders and Imams lambasting homosexuality, they need to realise that their sons are having sex with other men. We should be talking about condoms and safe sex, not hell and damnation!

 

Mr. Shola Adenekan

http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/

 

 

http://www.gnaija.net/profiles/blog/show?id=2396094%3ABlogPost%3A184258&xgs=1

 

 

 

A new ‘business’ appears to be taking roots among male students in many universities across the country. Investigations by our correspondents show that a number of male students have now joined their female counterparts to engage in prostitution to get more money. However, while many of the female undergraduates involved make their money from dating rich men, more male students appear to be getting involved in same-sex relationships.

And unlike their female counterparts, the male undergraduates, it was gathered, make more money and get more patronage for obvious reasons. Societal values and legislation works against same-sex relationships. Hence, the number of men involved in sodomy is still low when compared with women engaged in the age-long profession of prostitution.

Investigatioms revealed that the young men make an average of N50,000 from one outing and may get more money when they travel out of their base to meet their partners who usually belong to the affluent group in the society.

Besides, the amount of money a gay male makes depends on whether he acts as the “Top’’ or “bottom’’ in the relationship.

A student in one of the universities in the South-East, who pleaded anomymity, told one of our correspondents that apart from servicing the rich outside the campus, the male undergraduates also encouraged fellow students to engage in the act. Thus, it becomes a case of someone experienced trying to recruit the innocent. “Sometimes, a student can offer to pay as much as N20,000 to another student once he is desperate to have an affair,’’ our source said.

 

13 Comments

Comment by mahel Ayoub 5 hours ago

d end (world) is comin soon!

Comment by Slim 2 hours ago

i must share this, a anh.

Comment by Tikko 1 hour ago

Hey Slim! next time put some pix man.

Comment by Sheun Damole 1 hour ago

the end of the world is here!

what the ******!

Comment by munachimso ogubuike 1 hour ago

This is total madness

Comment by munachimso ogubuike 1 hour ago

This is total madness

Comment by BLESSING UDOMA 1 hour ago

the world is coming to an end so we are bound to see those thing happening.

Comment by Goddy Nwosu 1 hour ago

The is definetely comming to an end Goddy

Comment by Ganiyu Lawal 59 minutes ago

too many shouting OOOOOOOOOOOOOof the World is coming to an end. Can someone tell me when so i can prepare 4 it. not living my belongs to you greedy, selfshiness. instead of you people to make the world better to live in but you are trying to disturb the great work of God.
God creates the beautiful world to all leaving things. But good thing is not good for some people.

Comment by chrisdollars 55 minutes ago

Incredible, this was is only at the end point,
Slim don't join them ooooooooooooooooo

[Shola Adenekan]

Oga Bola,

Thanks for articulating the issue so well. For me, the suppression and vicious attacks on homosexuality is a potential time bomb for Nigeria. I remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when men and women who appeared on Nigerian television with stories of having HIV AIDS were ridiculed as sinners by religionists, the educated class and politicians, as sinners and scums. There were incessant jokes about "akuaya" (acquired AIDS) among those around me in Lagos, Ibadan and Akure. HIV, they said, was a whiteman disease.  Before you know it, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians were dying from HIV AIDS. Even the great Fela Kuti was not spared.

Now, we hear that our young men are having sex with other men for money. And what do we get? Similar condemnation from religionists and the pious, just as we did in the 1980s. The yeye honourable members of senate and house of representatives even considered a bill to ban homosexuality and gay marriage. I guess they've solved corruption, constant power shortage, high rate of infant mortality etc, and now they must tackle homosexuality!

Let me make this clear; the African American community had and still has the same attitude toward homosexuality. The result is that young African American men who are gays were sleeping with other men, while still maintaining sexual relationship with women, in order to satisfy a community which refuses to accept the reality that some Black men and women were born gay and will remain so.

I know that many of you have heard of  "Down-Low". D.L. is one of the main causes of HIV AIDS in the Black America community. AIDS is also the leading cause of death among young African Americans.

We need to accept the fact that some of our sons and daughters are born homosexual, and if they want to prostitute themselves, and since we won't fight for a better future for them, the least we can do is to embrace their sexuality and tell them about safe sex.

If we don't, I foresee another HIV AIDS calamity. You may think your sons and daughters may not be affected, but do you know who they are sleeping with, or the lifestyle of their sexual partners?

Instead of this stubbornness  and rant about "corrupt western values", we need to learn from history and embrace this reality.

But knowing Nigerian, we never learn from history. Sometimes it seems we cling to ridiculous religious and moral values despite impending doom.

Half of a sentence, the Yoruba say, is enough for the wise.

Mr. Shola Adenekan
www.thenewblackmagazine.com