By Halima Ogiri, Femi Soneye and Amos Dunia, Per Second News
Just back from Makurdi – A visit to ‘Ivis Hotel‘, situated along Lafia garage in North Bank, Markudi, the Benue State capital, showed and revealed a lot of deception and a far distance from being a guest lodge.
From the outside, it is very much like any other regular hotel to a first time visitor to the State capital, especially due to the hidden and quite location in which it is situated.
But unlike the regular hotels, Ivis is far different in operation and style owing to the covert and unconventional practices that take place inside the fenced premises. It has its distinct customers thus does not and would not just accept random visitors for lodging except its already identified guests who know and understand the rules of the game that takes place in the hotel. And the only way one can break the jinx is for a regular customer to introduce you to the manager, who after screening will now introduce you to the rules of the game.
First, you are told that all the rooms in the hotel are occupied by ready women that are trained to make your stay comfortable in the most relaxed manner. Rather than call it a brothel, it is given a colouration of a Guest Inn, but the simple truth remains that it is nothing other than a brothel.
Secondly, you are told that the “trained women” are mostly between the ages of 40 and 50 to meet the required experience and styles needed by some of the sex starved men even as it was gathered that some of the women are in their 60s. Interestingly, only guests willing to have sex with these “trained women” of low virtue are allowed into the lodge.
And as soon as a guest is screened and found fit to go into the hotel, he is told of RULE Number One which states; “no guest is allowed to go into the hotel with a girl friend or any other attachment or make an attempt to take another prostitute from somewhere else for lodging.”
A visit by Per Second News to the “talk of the town” hotel, revealed that the manager of the ‘hotel’, who holds sway and controls the prostitutes, does not stay inside the hotel premises, but operates from a small shop, under the guise of a barbing saloon directly opposite the hotel. Findings indicates that he deliberately sits outside in order to make it difficult for law enforcement agents to establish an alibi against him in case of arrest.
Surprisingly, our correspondent further gathered that even the police are scared of going to make any arrest in the hotel owing to the caliber of people that mostly patronize the brothel particularly members of security agencies that include the military and some top politicians that usually tip-toe to the hotel at night.
A peep into the hotel premises, showed most of the women strutting around the premises cooling off with different brands of energisers that include cigarrate, indian hemp and looking unclad with barely nothing left to someone’s imagination.
One of the men that frequent the hotel, Terna (surname withheld), in a chat with Per Second News, said most of the women smoke marijuana and some take about two bottles of cough syrups that contains over dose of codeine to enable them get high and set for business before going into the act of sexual exercise.
In the words of Terna; “Almost all the women smoke weed, and the funny thing is that it is members of the various security agencies that patronise them that bring these weeds for them.
On how much they pay for sex with these “trained women” he said; “Initially they charged N500 per round, but because of the way things are hard in the country now, which led to low patronage, they had to reduce it to N300. Some people still bargain with them and they will reduce it to N200. Due to the strong competition among them, most of them now collect N200 per round in order to attract customers. It is now cheaper than a bottle of beer.
“Most of them take up to N1000 or more a day home. Some of them are widows, some single mothers who have children to cater for, so they use the money for food, while others do it because of the pleasure the derive from it.
“At the end of the day, the women will settle the manager as part of their agreement; more like a particular percentage of what they make. If they don’t do that, the manager won’t allow them enter the hotel the next day. Some of them have sex with the manager when they do not have enough money to settle,” Terna explained.
Similarly, Adakole, who also lives around the area but says he does not patonise the hotel, confided in Per Second News that “these women of low morals” are believed to have worked out a system in a way that none of them would lose out in the business by organizing themselves into a strong union and run shift duty.
“The women usually run shifts; those for morning are different from those at night. The ones for morning come around 6am and leave by 5pm, while those for night resume by 5:30pm and leave by 6amthe next day. The old women don’t like running shifts as they don’t have much strength for more than one round; they are about four of them and they should be between 60 and 63 years old.”
An investigative report on prostitutes Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt hotels is on the way.
