The suspects. PHOTO: ODITA SUNDAY
Hotelier arrested for recruiting young girls into prostitution in Lagos
The Lagos State Police command has arrested a 33-year-old Victor Obano, an hotelier, for allegedly compelling young girls to work as commercial sex workers in his hotel.
The suspect, it was learnt, travels to different states in the country to lure young girls into the ‘dirty’ job.
The Guardian investigation reveals that Obano’s modus operandi is to promise his target a plum job. On arrival in Lagos however, the girls are forced into prostitution.
Detectives, who stormed the brothel at Ijegun, an outskirts of Lagos, arrested some of the suspected women of easy virtue.
The Lagos State police boss, Fatai Owoseni, revealed that the suspect triggered police intervention after he had forcibly seized the phone of a victim for refusing to work for him as a prostitute.
“The suspect was arrested when the aunt of one of the victims lodged a complaint at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, Yaba, that her younger sister’s phone was seized by her master for refusing to work as a prostitute in his brothel.
Owoseni, however, urged parents and guardians to be wary of those who come to them to assist their girl child secure jobs in Lagos and stop such act as it comes with a terrible consequence.
Obano told The Guardian that it was the victim who persuaded him to bring her to Lagos to work as a harlot. “I met the lady three months ago when I travelled to Calabar for a friend’s burial, through a friend who told me she had problem taking care of her two children. She begged me to bring her to Lagos, so that she could work and take care of them.
“But before bringing her, I went to see her father who also consented to her coming with me. Before we left Calabar for Lagos, I had told her what she would be doing when we get to Lagos and she agreed. The first money she made, she sent it back home for the upkeep of her children, but suddenly she was not concentrating on the hustling anymore, she started going out with some boys in my area, which annoyed me and I seized her phone.
“I was in my hotel on Wednesday when policemen came and arrested me for trafficking girls and also forcing them into prostitution. Some of the ladies in my hotel came through their friends to work. Nobody forced them into what they are doing.
“They paid N2,500 for each room they used. All I am after is my money. Whenever the girls come, I always provide them with accommodation, I don’t chase them away,” he said.
Grace, one of the commercial sex workers, who was arrested by the police alongside Obano, noted that she knew nothing about the case.
“I only came outside to urinate when policemen who came to raid the hotel arrested me. What I was able to gather was that when the victim was brought into the hotel, we never knew she had a sister in the neighborhood. It was when the owner of the hotel seized her phone and prevented her from going out with some boys in the area that her sister brought police to arrest our chairman.
“Since my children and I were abandoned by my husband, it was my mother, who is taking care of us. That was what prompted me into this. I thank God I have been able to eke out a living to support myself.”
