Date: 2017-05-20

An Ilorin-based legal practitioner, Mr Bayode Sesan, has urged the Kwara Government to control the growing number commercial sex workers in the state.

Sesan said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Ilorin on Friday, that high level of poverty was pushing most girls into prostitution in order to survive. "Most ladies and girls engage in commercial sex work for survival since their parents can no longer cater for them.

"Even some students finance their education through involvement in prostitution as there is no means to meet up their academics finances.

"It is not only lack of parental care that forces ladies to prostitution but poverty," he said.

Sesan, therefore, urged the state government to come up with measures to provide alternative means of livelihood to the commercial sex workers. He said that government should encourage them to acquire vocational skills and provide them with soft loans to engage in legitimate businesses.

The legal practitioner also advised the government to set up a committee to critically look into the activities of sex workers in the state and integrate them into the society.

Sesan said the government should mount intensive campaign against the trend in order to save those involved and others from the "decadent" trade.

"Prostitution act is a decadence that deserves to be discouraged in the society for the good of the public," he asserted.