We Have A Sexuality Problem In Nigeria

Nigerians are obsessed with se.x, we just pretend not to be.

In this article, I am going to be talking about pornography – Internet pornography to be precise (and ancillary issues). But I do so with an upfront caveat – I do not intend to moralise as it is not my place to debate the morality of what adults indulge in on their devices, in their spare time. However, as a student of culture and behavioural development, I am concerned about vulnerable groups; particularly children and young teenagers. So, my article will focus on these two groups and tangentially, on women.

In 2015, I was privileged to work on two projects. The first was Jack & Jil Therapy – a free telephone based platform for those needing help for critical sexuality & life issues. The second project was #SaveMirabel, a movement to raise urgent funds for Lagos’ only rape crisis centre – The Mirabel Centre. As a result of my involvement with these two initiatives, I was exposed to a treasure trove of information about sexuality issues in Nigeria. I will share some of them in this article.

In 2014, the popularity of Nigerian Google searches for pornography (relative to other searches) on a scale of 0 to 100 was above 80. (Google ranks as 100 any item that constitutes 10% or more of all searches in a country.) The number of average monthly searches by volume was 165,000 and the States with the greatest popularity for porn searches were: Lagos, Oyo, Delta, Rivers, Cross River and Abuja. The relative popularity of rape pornography videos was also above 80, with Lagos State leading the charge and Nigeria ranked third globally for the most Google searches for Gay pornography. (We were ranked second in 2013.)

Since 2009, pornography search popularity has always risen above 70 every December, save one. In December 2009 and 2010, Nigeria outstripped America in the popularity of searches for pornography – a nation twice our size.

A popular pornography site is among the top 50 sites visited by Nigerians according to Alexa.com. It is more popular than the leading jobs and news sites.