Nigeria’s conservative north is overflowing with aphrodisiacs

BESIDE THE food-sellers at a street market in Abuja, a man in a flowing white kaftan holds a brown leather bag in one hand. In the other, well, is a baby crocodile, which he holds out to a potential customer. “Do you want to touch it?” he asks in Hausa, a language spoken in northern Nigeria and surrounding countries, before offering far more than a fondle of a ferocious reptile: medicines for a cold; for chest pain; for a sore back; and to improve sexual performance.A protracted haggle ensues. Details are discussed. Instructions are issued. Money changes hands, as do powdered herbs wrapped in paper. The trade in aphrodisiacs in northern Nigeria is old and pervasive. Herbs are sold in markets, shops, the grounds of mosques, and now on social media. How odd. This is a region that is seen as culturally and religiously conservative. States enforce sharia on the Muslim majority. Women here, who are often garbed in body-length hijabs, are thought of as sexually repressed.