Op-ed by Sede Alonge @ TheGuardian.com, May 6

Nigerian media has been awash with news of a recent police raid in the capital, Abuja, in which dozens of women were arrested in and around nightclubs on charges of prostitution. A city official said one way police assessed the potential guilt of the women was if they were dressed “provocatively”. No men were arrested in the raid. There was also an ominously conspicuous absence of any evidence of soliciting, which is a crime under Nigerian law. Most alarming of all, there are witness reports of rape, sexual assault and financial extortion of the women by the policemen who arrested them. Some of the women were taken to a mobile court and allegedly pressured to plead guilty to charges of prostitution on the spot.

This is not the first time police in Nigeria’s capital have stormed nightclubs, arresting women who were perceived to be violating societal norms. Justifying the arrests, Abayomi Shogunle, one of the country’s top police commissioners, responded on social media to those he disdainfully described as “making noise” about the arrests. He declared that prostitution was not only a crime but also a “sin”, according to the country’s two main religions (Islam and Christianity), and a practice “Nigerian culture frowns at” [....]