The economics of sex work in Nigeria are brutal, chaotic, and almost nothing like what people imagine from the outside.
Content Warning: Sexual exploitation, substance use, violence
Milla laughs when I ask her the question. It’s not a polite laugh; rather it signals she has heard something absurd.
“Cash out from sex work quickly?” she repeats, her voice raspy from years of cigarettes. “Tell them to try it and see.”
Milla has been doing sex work in Lagos for a little over five years now. She is close to thirty, careful with her words, and carries the particular tiredness of someone who has long since stopped being surprised by anything. “If it was that easy,” she says, “every woman for this country go don enter market.”
Beside her, Amy — which is what we’ve somehow gotten from Amaka — gives a low, laugh of agreement. We’re seated in a corner at one of the best-kept secret lounges in Anthony, Lagos. She crushes her cigarette into an ashtray. I’ve just asked about the popular idea that even “low-class” sex workers clear over a million naira a month. Both women nearly choked on their drinks when I mentioned it.
These two very different women are bound by the same reality: the industry of sex work, spanning everything from working the hard streets nightly to the high-end circuit of hotels and private arrangements.
“People do the maths from outside,” Milla says. “They don’t think well. Expenses nko? Slow months? Wicked clients?” She pauses. “You don’t use Instagram rates to judge real life. Ashawo plenty pass customer.” There are far more women selling sex than men paying for it. “If I fit see one million every month steady steady, you think I’d still be here drinking cheap beer? I for don build house for Banana Island.” She laughs, but the edge in it is unmistakable.
The fantasy of easy money in sex work is one of Nigeria’s most persistent economic myths. Online, you will find confident back-of-the-napkin calculations estimating that even low-level sex workers are clearing six figures monthly. The logic is clean. The reality, as Milla and Amy will tell you, is not.
• • •
The Maths Nobody Does
Sex work in Nigeria runs on a kind of informal market logic that nobody teaches and nobody documents. There is no onboarding. No payslip. No HR department to call when something goes wrong. What there is: demand that is unpredictable, competition that is fierce, and a set of operating costs that eat into revenue in ways the outside world does not see.
Let’s start with the actual numbers. A short-time session — one client, a few hours — runs between ₦60,000 and ₦80,000 at standard rates. Negotiate down, and you’re looking at ₦40,000 to ₦50,000, sometimes as low as ₦30,000 if times are hard and the client knows it. An overnight starts at around ₦70,000 and can go well above ₦200,000 depending on the man (or the girl in question). Those are the headline figures. They are also where most people’s maths stops.
Milla runs down what comes next without being asked.
Accommodation: she cannot receive clients where she actually lives, so she rents by the night or keeps a separate arrangement.
Transport to and from jobs: sometimes across the city, sometimes to another state entirely.
Medication: antibiotics, contraceptives, and treatments for infections that come with the territory. “Last month, I hooked up with one married man and thought I had hammered,” she says. “My body never even recover from the pounding, I don use half the money buy antibiotics for the nonsense he gave me.”
Phone data: because that is where the best clients are.
And sometimes, substances: to get through a night she would otherwise not be able to stomach.
“By the time you remove everything, what remains is not what people think,” she says. “And those are the good months o.”
The bad months, she explains, can stretch. You’d have dry spells where the clients disappear and the costs do not. Periods after a bad encounter where she cannot work. There is no sick leave. No savings culture, because the income is too erratic to save from consistently. Just the grind resuming when it can.
• • •
The Cheat Code That Wasn't
Amy’s entry into sex work looked different. She was not street-level, she clarifies immediately. She had a job that was not paying her rent and a friend who introduced her to what she calls “the other side.” High-end, app-based, referral-only. The rates were not bad. The lifestyle looked, from the outside, nothing like what most people picture when they hear the word.
“I thought I had found the cheat code,” she says, with the tone of someone who no longer thinks this.
Amy is in her mid-twenties, polished, with carefully applied red lipstick and a wig that falls to her lower back. At a glance, you would never guess she made a living as a runs girl. “Some weeks, clients no go even show face,” she says. “Other times, you go meet two or three men in one night and still end up with nothing to show.”
I ask them why the popular perception is so wrong. Amy snorts. “Because the few times people hit jackpot, they shout it. They won’t tell you about the dry spells.” She leans forward. “Look, there are basically two sure ways a babe can cash out big in this business. One: be extremely young, fine like fresh bread, and know all the tricks to drive a man crazy. Two,” she raises two fingers, “go diabolical. Use juju or kayan mata charms to attract the big clients. If you’re not doing one of those, forget am. You’ll just be managing life.”
I ask, carefully, whether either of them has gone that route.
They exchange a look. “Me, I never touch jazz,” Amy says. “I was too scared. But I know girls who did. One babe I met in Abuja landed a big Alhaji client who spent over ₦500k on her in one week. She thought she had made it. That turned out to be her peak. The man vanished, the charm backfired or something. Today, that same fine babe is stuck in a backwater town doing runs with local touts. She’s worse off than before.”
Milla tuts and crosses herself. “May we not do the kind of thing that will destroy us.” I offer an amen for the sake of it. She takes a swig of her beer. “I never tried juju. I just dey use my sense. But sense no cover everything.”
• • •
Who Will You Report To?
This is the part that does not travel well in the online conversation. People hear “₦500k in a week” and stop listening. They do not hear the three months after it where nothing came. They do not hear the risk calculation that goes into traveling to an unknown man in a strange city. They do not ask what happens when a client does not pay, or pays and becomes violent.
“One time, me and my friend gave four men the time of their lives at a party,” Milla says, her eyes hardening at the memory. “And these were supposed big boys. After the whole night, they gave us ₦100,000 total and said their bank app was having issues, they’d send more later. Story! But who will you report to? Call police say ‘Oga, I do ashawo work, client no pay’? We just had to leave, carrying our shame and bruises.”
“At least you had a friend with you,” Amy says quietly. “I went alone to see one man who contacted me on Instagram. I was desperate, my rent was due. I got there and he and two friends were waiting. Three of them for one me.” She grimaces. “They promised ₦100k each. I thought of the money and stayed.” Her poise falters for the first time. “After, they transferred me ₦50k total. I was too tired to fight. I took it and staggered out at dawn. When I complained, the main one said I should be grateful I even got that, that they could post videos of me online if I made noise.”
“They filmed you?” Milla asks.
“I didn’t even realize. Probably while I was in the middle of, you know.” Amy falls silent. “This work, e get as e be. Your dignity, your safety — none of it is a guarantee.”
She falls silent, and for a while the only sounds are distant traffic and Afrobeats from inside the lounge, which doubles as a strip club. Milla pours a bit of her beer on the ground; a small libation for pains that words can’t fully carry.
• • •
Part-Timers and Digital Dreams
Not all sex workers are professional or full-time. Some are bankers, students, married women doing hookup quietly on the side to make ends meet. Milla nods at this. “Sex work is any time you collect money for bed matter, whether you call yourself a runs girl or not.”
“And those ones often see the worst,” Amy adds. “Because they’re inexperienced. They don’t have street sense to smell danger.”
This part of our conversation brings us to someone named Cynthia.
Amy offers the gist. “This Cynthia was a young, decent girl who hit bad times. She took one hookup to clear her debt – just one. After the man slept with her, he beat her mercilessly, took back the money he’d given her, and even stole her phone. She ran out of the hotel half-naked, bleeding. That was her first and last attempt.” Amy shakes her head sadly. “The poor girl said she’d rather beg in the streets than try that again. And you know what? She still never cleared the debt. So what was the point of all that trauma?”
“People say online, ‘if I just open leg now, money will rain.’ The odds are you’ll be humbled,” Amy says. “You think you’ll enter this thing and be cruising in Benz? You fit end up in Keke with empty pocket and broken spirit.” Milla adds
The digital end of the business is no cleaner. Amy has friends who tried their hands on these platforms. “I have friends who tried AllAccess or Fansly and all those online sites hoping to cash out. Snapchat even. Beautiful girls, fine body, sexy content, but beauty doesn’t guarantee jack. It’s mostly luck. One of my friends is ten times prettier than me, but I made more than her because I happened to meet one generous client on a good day. Meanwhile, another girl on those places might blow up just because some white guy fetishizes her look, while finer girls earn peanuts. There’s no formula at all.”
Not to mention, your face will be on the internet. I prefer the dating apps. Although they have their own safety issues, at least you don’t always have to be outside all the time. It does have its own strategy, however,” she adds.
When I ask what that means, Amy talks about the performance of availability, the expectation that you are always on, always responsive, always ready to manage a man’s ego on top of everything else. She talks about the strategy involved; what she calls “making them thirst,” giving enough to keep a client interested without giving so much that he moves on. It is, she says, closer to sales than people want to admit.
“You are running a business,” she says. “But it is a business where you are also the product, and the product has to hold itself together.”
“How do you cope?” I ask softly. “Emotionally, I mean. The danger, the stress… It sounds terrifying.”
Milla smiles — wry, sad. “You cope or you die. Simple.” She pulls a small bottle of gin from her purse. “See this? My best friend. A few shots before any client, or I no fit do anything.”
Amy nods. “Most of us take something. Alcohol, weed, Tramadol. Anything to numb yourself a little. Because if you’re not high small, you go run mad from fear.” She glances down. “I can’t remember the last time I slept properly. When I’m with a man I don’t know well, I can’t close both eyes. I’ve heard too many stories of girls strangled or taken for ritual. Fear no let me sleep.”
Milla raises a glass. “But we still dey here oh! We still dey kampe. Soldiers.”
Amaka chuckles softly and raises hers. “Survivors.” They clink in an air-toast and drink. I love dark humor as much as the next guy, but it’s a bit too dark for me to appreciate this evidence of the camaraderie between those who’ve seen the same hell.
• • •
If You Still Have a Choice
Finally, I ask the question that’s been on my mind from the start. “What would you say to a young woman; someone curious or tempted by sex work, who thinks it’s an easy way out of her problems?”
Milla, ever boisterous, is the first to answer: “I’d tell her, sister, no be AMVCA red carpet oh. This life is not that Instagram slay-queen fantasy. It will scar you. Yes, some girls make big money once or twice. But at what cost? Your body will never remain the same—physically, emotionally, spiritually.” “The things you’ll see, you can’t unsee. The stigma, too. Even if you make money and leave, people will forever tag you. One day you’ll want to marry or start a business, enemies will whisper ‘she was an ashawo.’ Society will never let you forget. So think very well.”
Her voice cracks for the first time, but she swallows and continues. “I entered this work because I had no choice. But if you still have a choice, abeg use am. Don’t come here. This road no get shortcut, na long suffering.”
Amy says nothing, but we all know her silence is an endorsement.
• • •
The Work Nobody Counts
Nigeria’s informal economy employs the vast majority of its workforce. Across that economy, the pattern repeats: high entry, low barrier, unpredictable returns, zero institutional protection. Sex work is an extreme example of this, but it is not a different category. It follows the same brutal logic as many other forms of unregulated self-employment: the people who succeed do so through a combination of skill, timing, and luck that cannot be reliably reproduced, and the people who do not succeed often find that out only after they are already in.
The fantasy of sex work as a reliable income stream is, at its core, the same fantasy that surrounds every informal hustle sold online. The screenshot of the big win, shared widely. The reality of the dry months and the operating costs, shared by almost nobody. It is a market information problem as much as anything else, and people make entry decisions based on the best-case data while living the median-case experience.
One thing is for sure. Their voices will stay with me, echoing long after they’ve gone: Sex work is not easy money; one way or another, you pay the price.
—
Names have been changed to protect the identities of the women in this piece.
