I took my Uncle out for dinner last night. It was his first time back in Nigeria in a few years. On our way back we drove through Ikoyi, and passed through the Thompson roundabout. He was particularly shocked to find "women of ill repute" in such a high brow area. It did not fit with the US meme of "street walkers are found in low rent districts only"

From a Lagos perspective its easy to see why women of negotiable virtue are found in the rich areas. In the US, the clients will happily go to them, if only to avoid detection by their friends and neighbors. In Lagos, that a'int happening. Think of it as a logical extension of the "I don't do bridges." So for virtue to be negotiated, the ladies must meet up with the johns as opposed to the other way.

So in today's lunch room discussion, this was an easy tale to recount, and brought much laughter. What brought some debate, was that prostitution was driven by the fact that there are a lot of women in short skirts willing to sleep with men for money. In this colleagues eyes, prostitution is driven by the supply of willing ladies. This obviously presupposes that the men would be fine if the women were not available.

I and most of the other denizens of the lunch room took a different (and more standard) view. That it is the demand for these services that creates the supply. That if there was no demand from the males there would be limited prostitution.

After all the fact that there are different classes of prostitution, from the street walker, to the bar hoppers, to the aristo runners, and then the "girl friends" kind of proves that they are ways to meet the different kinds of demand in the Lagos market.

We then moved on to not so fun topics as regards to marriageability of said girls when they sober up, and what not, but that's not as much fun. So what say you, is it the supply or demand that drives the market?

PS. I finally resorted to the word prostitution cos I had run out of euphemisms so for the second challenge can you supply any that I missed out?