The Guardian Reports: Women dressed ‘provocatively’ are being arrested in Nigeria...

The Nigerian Guardian Newspaper reported that women dressed 'provocatively'(as assessed by the Police) are being labelled "prostitutes' and arrested. Sede Longe writes in the Nigerian Guardian, "Nigerian media has been awash with news of a recent police raid in the capital, Abuja, in which dozens of women were arrested in and around nightclubs on charges of prostitution. A city official said one way police assessed the potential guilt of the women was if they were dressed “provocatively”. No men were arrested in the raid. There was also an ominously conspicuous absence of any evidence of soliciting, which is a crime under Nigerian law. Most alarming of all, there are witness reports of rape, sexual assault and financial extortion of the women by the policemen who arrested them. Some of the women were taken to a mobile court and allegedly pressured to plead guilty to charges of prostitution on the spot...The Nigerian criminal code – used to justify the police actions – is supposed to also penalise owners of premises where prostitution takes place. Assuming, for argument’s sake, that these women were actually prostitutes, why were the owners of the premises – who are most likely to be men – not arrested too? Such selective law enforcement shows that women are still far from being free to exercise their rights as autonomous individuals in Nigeria. The actions of the police, and using religion and culture to justify them, reveal a society invested in subjugating women.Labelling women prostitutes because of how they dress shows how the law continues to fail women in Nigeria, where patriarchy dons the robe of moral and cultural custodian backed by the power of the state. It is not uncommon for a woman considered inappropriately dressed to be demeaned in public by men. This is despite the fact that Nigeria, being constitutionally a secular country, does not have any statutory dress codes...Read more.