Hello friends, welcome again to the biggest forum against the pornography phenomenon in Nigeria’s print media. By reading this column and sharing your thoughts, you are contributing to a more chaste society here in Nigeria and beyond.

After a month on the pages of our darling newspaper, I expected to be besieged with calls, texts and emails based on the controversial nature of our subject.

But that has not been the case. It was quite the opposite when we first hit the stands back in 2011. This second season has been met by a reticent reading public.

I surely hope that changes because I want this column to be interactive, knowing that porn is a big problem in our society today and it is our collective responsibility to eradicate it.

A Brief Recap On Overcoming Porn
During the last issue, we dealt with how to overcome porn using many experts abroad. Here, I would like to quickly share my thoughts on the subject from my personal experience.

Everybody struggling with the porn habit should know that it would not go away in a day, but ultimately, God and self-discipline would save the day. A strong relationship with God through prayer and other spiritual exercises and a razor-sharp discipline that expunges all forms of contact with porn sets the foundation and also constitute the forces that would set the person free.

Discipline in this case is bipolar: mental and physical. Mental discipline means rewiring your brain to deactivate all porn pictures in your brain and preventing them from coming alive to lure you into porn. You must train your mind to loathe and kill them.

Physical discipline refers to getting rid of all physical traces of porn from magazines to videos or CDs. In other words, stay away from porn and porn will stay away from you.

Porn Industry In Nigeria
Today, we want do an exposition on the porn industry in Nigeria. Far from stating the obvious, we are doing this to warn people to be wary of these facts, so that they can stay away from porn and choose a more positive way of seeking fun, edutainment and escape routes.

I have more recently stumbled on the fact that the porn industry worldwide is a trillion dollars market and that monetary attraction is one of the biggest reasons why it is a very lucrative venture for corrupt investors everywhere, Nigeria inclusive.

According to Reginald Johnson of the Washington’s View, the money backers and sponsors of the ever-booming illicit porn market in Nigeria are military officers, expatriate workers, politicians, businessmen and oil workers.

Unfortunately, the porn market in Nigeria is growing in leaps and bounds by the day, with Nigerians shamelessly acting in what is now called “Nude Nollywood.”

Investigations reveal that many of the actresses in these porn videos are former sex workers or victims of human trafficking who were deported from Italy and other European and American countries.

These “sex professionals” team up with their colleagues here in Nigeria, together with unemployed young men in search of the fast buck, to produce these illegal flicks.

Further investigations by another news medium show that back in 2001, porn movies, such as Valentine Sex Party, Oba’s Nine Daughters, A Forest of Flowers, the Last Nigerian Virgin and Allen Avenue were produced by some pioneer barons of the porn industry in Nigeria, but their business was clamped down by the Police, who put them out of business.

The same source also revealed that commercial porn movies started production in Nigeria in 1999, but porn movies started finding their way into Nigeria between 1995 and 1998 during the prurient and corrupt military junta of the late Gen. Sani Abacha.

Today, I understand that there are a dozen or more production houses for porn movies in the country. “Nude Nollywood” is epitomised in the likes of Afrocandy, real name Judith Opara Mazagwu, who is Nigeria’s leading porn star, singer, director and producer.

She unabashedly grants interviews defending her job as mere entertainment. This mother of two girls sees nothing wrong if any of her girls joins her in the business. Has the world turned upside down?

Pornographic Literature in Nigeria
The leading indigenous porn magazine in Nigeria is Better Lover, published by self-styled porn queen, Sandra Ekwunife.

The package includes coloured pictures of nude Nigerian porn stars, together with many lewd sex stories.

There are other publications, like Lolly Sugar, which are less colourful, but equally contained sex stories meant to excite their readers.

Porn: A Bluetooth Away
Another fast way of acquiring porn is via the Bluetooth device on phones. Many Nigerians have acquired porn through this; a friend downloads porn and transfers it to another via Bluetooth and on and on like that.

Internet Porn
But the biggest and easiest way to acquire porn in Nigeria is through the Internet. There are millions of porn sites available online and I understand that 30 per cent of all websites on the Internet are porn sites.

To download porn on your phone, you need Internet connection. Sadly, just about anybody, including children can have Internet access.

Millions of Nigerians have access to the Internet through their phones, personal computers and cyber cafes and many of these people use porn.

Porn has become our dirty national open secret and every Nigerian who uses porn is contributing to the expansion of the trillion dollar worldwide porn industry. Talk of moral decadence!

Government Action Against The Porn Industry In Nigeria
When Col. Sambo Dasuki was the National Security Adviser (NSA) to former President Goodluck Jonathan, he was quoted as saying that the government would soon shut down all porn sites in Nigeria. But after that statement, nothing was done.

The Police are constantly raiding the porn industry, but that has not shut down the porn market. Porn is openly distributed in Alaba International Market, where there are shops that deal exclusively in porn movies and on our streets. Where are the Police?

I asked a lawyer friend of mine if there are any laws against porn in Nigeria and I was shocked when he answered in the negative. The only law in our constitution against porn only protects the Nigerian child from it.

It appears there are no real laws against the possession, production and distribution of porn. Even though the censor’s board is clamping down on explicit materials in films, but that is still not enough to stall the porn market.

The National Assembly should pass a law abrogating the possession, production and distribution of porn in Nigeria. Something should be done about blocking porn sites in Nigeria.

The future of a better and more morally conscious country depends on this for us all today and for posterity.

Let me know what you think. Follow me on twitter @isaiahogodo. Call or text on 08026229520 and email me at [email protected].

Send a Facebook friend request to Isaiah Ogodo and join the Facebook group, #Let’s expunge pornography from our world today. Stay chaste and be blessed.