Telegram Mismanagement and False Information Fuel Exploitative Sex Work in Nigeria

On the day I met 26-year-old Shola (not her real name), she had just come to a well-known hotel in Ogba, a suburb of Lagos, to work as a prostitute. Shola started her journey into sex work on Telegram in 2023. A friend introduced her to a prostitution group on the app, and by April 2025, Shola was fully engaged in the business. In Nigeria, prostitution is often called ‘hookup,’ where sexual activities are exchanged for money.

The hotel I met Shola in lets prostitutes work openly in the corridors and the club. Their plan is simple. Men spend money on the prostitutes to buy drinks at the club and then pay to stay at the hotel for sex. It’s a win-win for them. The global sex industry makes about $186 billion every year, and Nigeria contributes around 6.45 percent of that amount.

Shola seems to be popular at the hotel. Everyone wants to talk to her. Within minutes of arriving, she is already with a male client. They sit together in the hotel club, bottles of beer in front of them, cigarettes in hand, while loud music plays.

I sat a little distance away from Shola in the club. A friend had introduced us earlier, and we exchanged phone numbers. We started chatting on WhatsApp about her experiences with prostitution on Telegram, even while she was next to her client. Sometimes, our talk shifted from online to personal.

Private Telegram Groups

Shola finds most of her clients in a private Telegram prostitution group called “Obawole, Ogba, and Iju Ishaga,” which has rose emojis in its name. Unlike other groups that use terms like “hookup” to signal their purpose, this group doesn’t use any such hints.

The group’s name refers to an area in the Ifako-Ijaiye and Ikeja local government areas of Lagos State. These areas are not far from each other, and the group aims to connect prostitutes with clients in that area.

The group is private, so without inside info, you might never know it exists. Telegram allows users to create private groups with up to 200,000 members, where they can share photos, videos, and files up to 2 GB. The app was created by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov and launched in August 2013. By 2025, it had over 1 billion active users each month. The platform’s features include end-to-end encryption, hidden phone numbers, and bots, allowing groups like Obawole Ogba and Iju Ishaga to hide in plain sight.

Shola helped me join the Telegram prostitution group and showed me how to get clients. She took my phone and typed a message for me:

“I am available for any short rest and overnight with BJ (Blow job meaning oral sex),” Shola asked me with a raised eyebrow if I knew how to perform BJ, and I nodded. She sent the message, saying I would soon start getting clients. She was right. Requests for sexual services quickly started coming into my Telegram account, with some clients calling me impatiently.

Extortion and Abuse

Before we ended our chat, Shola warned me about an admin named Cattea who extorts money from women in the group.

Another prostitute I met at the hotel told me about Cattea. She only gave her first name and was in the group until Cattea blocked her for not paying “tithe.” Let’s call her Blessing. She explained how she paid Cattea N2,000 to become a verified member. She even showed me the receipt on her phone, desperate to prove her story.

Blessing said things got difficult when Cattea kept asking her for money and threatened to mute her in the group. If that happened, she wouldn’t be able to promote her services to attract clients. She paid him N1,000 on two occasions before deciding enough was enough. Cattea blocked her from the group. Anger filled her voice as she shared her story.

Like Blessing, Angel, another member of Obawole, Ogba, Iju Ishaga, faced extortion from different Telegram admins, not just Cattea. Angel is part of other groups that connect women with clients in various high-end areas of Lagos. She paid N10,000 to join the groups: @lekkibeach, @ibejuLekki, and @ajahconnect. But soon, she became a victim of extortion. In a month, the group admin muted her and demanded N70,000 to regain access.

Angel said the admins running Telegram groups for some upscale areas seem to be a couple, and they extort women, thinking they cannot be touched.

“It’s messing with my head, lately,” she said.

Besides being extorted by the admins, Angel has also faced mistreatment from clients she meets through Telegram groups. She has been body-shamed, left stranded, and threatened with violence. One time, she took a Bolt ride costing N30,000 to meet a client who never showed up. Another time, when she asked a client for N250,000 for anal sex, he insulted her and threatened her.

But while women like Angel struggle in these Telegram groups, admins keep making money off their accounts. They not only extort prostitutes but also charge membership fees and can raise prices whenever they want. Though Angel paid N10,000 to join @ajahconnect, when I tried to join, the admin wanted N35,000. Ajah Connect has over 16,000 members.

Prostitution Groups Pop Up

With money to be made from managing Telegram prostitution groups, many other rings have emerged across Nigeria, even in universities. I found 86 such groups.

Some groups moved from WhatsApp to Telegram after being banned from the former. One such group is Olosho Connect Naija, where men ask to be sex slaves, and women sell sex videos. Some members even advertise opportunities for porn stars and transgender activities.

The admin manager, Henry Otareh, said the group started on WhatsApp but plans to become the leading prostitution connection on Telegram in Nigeria.

“We want people from at least every major city in Nigeria: Abuja, Lagos, PH, Asaba, Owerri, Enugu, Umuahia, Uyo, Calabar,” Henry said, asking members to help make his dream come true by sharing the group’s link with, “even those in small towns and villages.”

Olosho Connect Naija has changed names several times before settling on one reflecting Henry’s ambition.

After picking its name, the admin demands male members pay N5,000 to his Opay account: 9159563993, while payments for prostitutes can range from N3,000 to N20,000.

For women, they must prove they are prostitutes. To get verified, I shared a picture and my age with June Din, the group’s owner. Minutes later, with June using Telegram’s label feature, I was tagged a “verified escort.” This means men can trust I am a real prostitute and can use my services.

I asked June what protections exist for women who are verified prostitutes, and she said none.

“This is a hookup; nobody is guaranteeing you safety. You are meeting someone for the first time that you don’t know, so that’s the risk,” she told me in a voice note. I felt tears come to my eyes.

While the group offers no protection, it uses Telegram’s privacy features to shield itself. It prevents users from screen-grabbing, recording, or copying information on phones. It also uses AI tools like ChatKeeperbot to control spam and Safeguard for security. If you try to take a screenshot during a private chat, it warns you. You can leave a group, but you cannot report it.

Henry tried to justify Olosho Connect Naija's existence in a voice note, saying “prostitution is the oldest profession in human history” and that “the group is here to stay.”

But historical records show that toolmaking is the oldest profession, dating back over 2.6 million years. The idea of prostitution as “the world’s oldest profession” comes from Rudyard Kipling in the 19th century, during debates about its legalization.

Henry also claimed women are more sexually active when men pay for it since relationships come with rules that cause anxiety for women. But public health expert and sex educator Elizabeth Adewale called this claim false, saying, “for most women, sex with their partners doesn’t come with anxiety.”

Beyond Henry’s misleading claims, he uses nudity to promote sexual exploitation, showcasing videos of naked women on Telegram’s Story Albums feature. Henry has nine videos of nude women in his album. Some videos have black-and-white ads saying: “I have girls available for hookup all over Nigeria.”

I decided to check the source of one video showing a young woman naked, spinning her body. The video was traced back to a Nigerian porn site where leaked nudes are often posted. The group’s name and link are withheld to protect the individuals involved. The video description reads: “Akwa Ibom Girl Nude Video Leaks.”

A snippet from the same video was also shared on Facebook on June 3, 2024, by a user named Kopala Chimz, who covered the girl’s private parts with teary emojis. I reported the video to Facebook, but they refused to take it down, only hiding it from minors by saying it violated guidelines for what minors can see.

In addition to using women’s nudity to advertise, Henry also recruits women for sex in and out of the country. In a message on Olosho Connect Naija on February 17, 2025, he said,

“If you are interested in traveling to Ghana to work, slide into my DMs ASAP!” A few hours later, he posted again, “If you are available for a ‘short time’ in Calabar and you give head (oral sex), DM. Your services are urgently needed.”

I reached out to Henry about jobs in Ghana, and he promised to “get in touch.”

Telegram’s privacy policy forbids using groups for “illegal activities in most countries. This includes child abuse and selling or offering illegal goods and services.”

I reported Olosho Connect Naija’s activities to Telegram via its abuse email on January 18, asking if the group violates their rules and what actions they take to manage such groups.

Though Telegram did not reply, they took down the prostitution group by January 22.

But it didn’t end there. A week later, Henry started another Telegram prostitution group with a similar name and shared it for people to join. Since I was already a verified member of the previous group, he invited me to join the new one as well.

Women’s Rights Activist Oluwafunmbi Ogunsola suggested that Telegram should warn group admins that repeated offenses will lead to permanent bans.

“They need to keep monitoring the groups to ensure that admins don’t just create new ones after being banned,” Oluwafunmbi said. “When they break the rules, they should just ban them from using the platform.”

Prostitution is illegal in Northern Nigeria. In the Southern parts, Sections 223, 224, and 225 of the Criminal Code forbid facilitating or procuring prostitutes. This includes providing facilities or arranging for people to patronize sex workers or recruiting women and girls for sex work. Lawyer Christiana Longe explained that the Criminal Codes 222, 223, and 224 make groups like Olosho Connect Naija illegal, calling them online brothels.

Other local laws, like Nigeria’s Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act, and international policies like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), also criminalize benefiting from a woman’s prostitution, including pimps, brothel keepers, and traffickers.

To help prosecute Henry and June, I reported Olosho Connect Naija to Godwin Eyake, Head of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) at the Cross River Command. I also shared the group link with him on WhatsApp so he could see their activities. I then asked what actions would be taken.

Godwin hinted that their existence isn’t illegal. He said the agency can only “step in” if there is proof of exploitation, like if someone else is taking money earned from prostitution. He said they would also get involved if “the recruiter tries to blackmail victims into sharing nude images or videos.”

In response, lawyer Dogo Joy pointed out that the law, especially Section 223 (2) and 225 (B), is clear that anyone facilitating prostitution is illegal, whether they profit or not.

“The law does not say they must make money; just keeping a brothel for prostitution is punishable,” she said angrily, adding, “online or offline, it is an offense in Nigeria.”

Joy noted that the punishment is outdated since the law is from the 90s. Offenders face only “a fine of one hundred naira or six months in prison or both.” She urged Nigeria to update its sexual exploitation laws for tougher penalties.

After Godwin’s response, which promised no action, I reported Olosho Connect Naija’s activities to NAPTIP’s headquarters through its official email. The agency, through its Director for Legal and Prosecution, Ijeoma Amugo, confirmed that the group’s activities are illegal. In a letter, they promised their cybercrime team would investigate.

Women’s rights advocate Prisca Iwendi suggested that NAPTIP should assign a team to monitor and prosecute managers of online prostitution groups that recruit women for sex. She added that hotels acting as brothels should also be monitored and penalized.

Anna Fisher, co-founder of Nordic Model Now, an international NGO working to abolish prostitution, advised Telegram to take stronger action against prostitution advertising groups.

“These sites have led to a huge increase in the size of the prostitution industry,” Anna said. “We believe shutting them down is the only way to reduce the trafficking these sites enable.”

Meanwhile, on March 23, the new Olosho Connect Naija added an AI bot called Ban Protector to detect and remove media reporters. Four days later, on March 27, Telegram suspended my account “on suspicion of spam,” closing my access to the Telegram prostitution networks.