Nigerians media should stop using prostitutes for click-bait and propaganda

From time immemorial, Nigerian media has used the sexual persuasion of Nigerian prostitute for perverted propaganda supposed to promote passion or the death of endorsement for a particular phenomenon in a roundhouse of lazy journalism and a sadly dynamic cliché.

The most popular headlines usually revolve around things that instantly inspire passion of some kind in people and those comments are usually tied to the season they are used in. Over the years, headliners by supposed journalists read like, “Allen avenue prostitutes promise free sex if the Super Eagles of Nigeria win…”

PDP Presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar at a campaign rally in Jalingo, Taraba state Pulse Nigeria

The most recent recidivist and otherwise negative quip for equal parts nonsensical journalism in the infamous long line of idiocy is the supposed fake report a little over 24 hours ago which stated that 10, 000 prostitutes had stormed Abuja to support PDP Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

First, why does this keep happening?

The reason is simple; sex sells anything and society sees a spectacle to be examined meticulously when it sees prostitutes.

One those infamous News of the World (newspaper) covers. (Wikipedia) Pulse Nigeria

That’s not fathoming the hypocrisy of chastising prostitutes, only to later go buy sex in some way. Despite being in the middle evolution of secondary digital age, media is back in the tabloid era of click-bait, blockbuster headlines which News of the World and The Sun UK were famous for.

The belief is that click-bait headlines aid newspaper sales and those notions are not farfetched – numbers don’t lie. In the old days, while it was also about what news and exclusives were being shared, it also mattered that you had the heading to attract readers. Thus, the idea of click-bait was birthed.

An impression of the Saxon wars of the middle ages. (Commons) Pulse Nigeria

But sadly, the fuel that kept the furnace heated and blessed with enough oxygen to burn brightly fires of classic Saxon warfare was competition – in the dog eat dog world of capitalism, you simply cannot afford to be caught napping.

You either measure up or get bodied out of business. It was not about integrity, despite the notion that click-bait journalism was never going to be sustainable overtime.

Nonetheless, it carried some businesses for a while.

Back to prostitution and Nigerian media

After the release of Falz’s hit single, ‘Talk,’ woke conversations were again tailored to the ever polarizing issue of transactional sex and/or prostitution as an offspring. Women in particular wanted to know why we would criticize and hate prostitution without criticizing the buyers of sex who are equally culpable in the court of public opinion.

The average Nigerian looks down on prostitutes and sees them as human beings of lesser value. While sex sells, and asides the argument of professional incompetence that these headlines arouse, it is double standard and hypocrisy to then want to benefit from the wrong we criticize.

It is wrong when you sensationalize what you so vehemently hate for the purpose of promoting your own craft. You cannot benefit from your own wrongdoing; you cannot judge a concept and then proceed to use it as an authority to garner support for your trade – that’s high-level social double jeopardy.

That said, how low is it to use prostitution, an outlawed Nigerian concept to promote the story of a Presidential candidate. There seems a disconnect lying fundamentally with baited breath, waiting to explode between the lines.

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow. (Goodreads) Pulse Nigeria

Finally, just as the protagonist in the classic Aminata Sow Fall novel, The Beggar’s Strike lost the plot, and attempted to beg the street beggars back when he needed the after he had initially chased them away from the street, you cannot desecrate everything prostitution stands for and then try to use that same thing prostitution stands for to your end.

While the beggars in Beggars’ Strike fought for themselves to prove a point, the prostitutes might not have a unified voice to speak for themselves, but we shall speak for them and hold hypocrites accountable.