Nigeria’s worsening economic hardship and its crushing effects leaves many Nigerians with deadly alternatives. PUNCH Healthwise investigations expose how the situation has pushed Lagos teenage schoolgirls from low-income families into prostitution as they struggle to survive, SODIQ OJUROUNGBE reports In the heart of Mushin, one of Lagos’ most chaotic and crowded neighbourhoods, stood a rundown hotel that had become a silent witness to a darker side of the city. The air around it was thick with the smell of sweat, desperation, and broken dreams.
This was no longer just a hotel, it was a refuge for many teenage schoolgirls who had been swallowed whole by the city’s unrelenting hustle. The sign above the entrance, with its faded letters reading “White House,” looked out of place next to the decay around it. Inside, the walls, once bright and welcoming, were now cloaked in layers of dirt and neglect.
The cheerful colours that had once adorned the rooms were faded, and peeling, as though time itself had turned its back on this place. What remained were the echoes of lives lived in limbo, trapped between survival and discomfort. It wasn’t a place anyone chose to stay, but for some girls, it was the only choice left.
The hotel is now a pleasant home for them — the price of survival paid with their bodies. There, sitting on the chipped, faux-leather couch at the hotel’s reception was Arike Mayowa and her 15-year-old friend, Abidemi Kosoko. Mayowa, just 16 years old, a.
