“The Vulgar and Obscene Language”

Abstract

This chapter focuses on adult prostitution and the physical, ethnic, and racial geography of sex work. In the view of moralists, adult prostitutes represented a different category of women believed to be in firm control of their sexuality, the financial resources they accrued from their activities, and how that money was spent. Prostitution was not only a profitable profession, it also directly and indirectly contributed to the colonial state's agenda of maintaining the city as a hotspot of migrants. As such, sex work mirrored the diversity of the colonial urban economy and consumption pattern of Lagosians. The chapter then looks at the activities of delinquent youth known in the urban dictionary as boma and jaguda boys and how their identity and behavior gave new connotations to prostitution as a profession that must be prohibited.