“We’ve Sold Our Souls to the Devil” (I): Uncovering the Dark Truths About Nigerian P*rn Industry
- Nigeria produces a high percentage of Africa’s adult content, with the country’s southern region being the hub
- Legit.ng’s investigation into the controversial activities of Nigerian porn partakers has uncovered that drug use, degradation, abuse, among other vices, are rampant
- This work, by Ridwan Adeola Yusuf, is the result of five years of planning, reporting, researching, discreet investigation and interviews with the industry’s insiders
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Warning: This is an adult-related story. Reader discretion is advised.
Ikeja, Lagos state - “I was only 22 years old when I made the biggest mistake of my life.”
This profound admission was made by famous former Nigerian pornstar, Ededey Eworitsemogha Delphina Joy, who used to go by the sobriquet, Savage TrapQueen.
Source: UGC
Pornstars are performers (also called models) in the pornography industry, while porn mainly refers to visual materials that depict explicit content intended to arouse sexual excitement.
In her active years (2019 being the last), Joy was a victim of exploitation and physical assault. She’d been fascinated by the limelight and passionate about building a career in modelling, emerging as first runner-up in the 2018 edition of the Face of African Queen beauty pageant. However, a ‘reality television show’ slot pitched to her turned into a two-year nightmare.
“I didn’t plan to be a pornstar,” says Joy, who now prefers to be addressed as JoyDahQueen. “A friend actually told me about the job. She told me it was a reality TV show. But on getting there, I realised it was porn. The girls and the first person I worked with seemed convincing and led me into it. I could have resisted them, but I was foolish.”
Joy is not alone: some of the industry’s biggest resources are naive, hypersexual early twenty-somethings looking to make a quick buck. For teens tricked into hardcore recordings, they do not exactly know what they are signing up for.
In January 2021, operatives of the Nigeria Police Interpol’s National Central Bureau (NCB) Abuja arrested two Kano-based suspects who are members of a trans-border/international child porn syndicate. The suspects, Mohammad Umar and Ibrahim Aminu, often take undue advantage of underage girls and disseminate video recordings of the illicit sexual act on social media platforms.
Yekini Adebimpe Wunmi, the Lagos-based adult content creator popularly known as Mis Nympho, got into porn filming through unsolicited recruitment for a shoot. 18 and inexperienced, she started as a nude model, uploading her pictures for X and Instagram users to view.
When I met Wunmi at a lodge in Oyingbo, Ebute Metta area, sometime in 2021, she spoke with relish about having a beautiful body, which “I cannot keep to myself”.
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Based on her involvement in nudity, a DM from a local adult entertainment production led her to Osun, a state she was not at all conversant with.
“It (porn) was something I never thought I would do,” admits ‘Wunmi Savage’. It was so random and impulsive. I posted a picture on Twitter, it went viral at the time, negatively viral, and then this production (I am not going to mention their name) reached out to me and told me something about shooting porn.”
Source: Original
Wunmi, now 24, accused the unnamed ‘company’ of breach of agreement, saying “they paid me, but they did not pay me the amount we agreed on.” The film’s team also tricked her with a mask shoot proposition - the main reason she jumped on the opportunity.
“I was even tiny; really young. It was now a situation where we could either do it willingly or do it forcefully. They did not say it directly, but if you read the room, that was like the situation.”
For context, this could be deemed sex trafficking, a situation in which a commercial sex act is induced by force or coercion. It is a criminal offence in Nigeria.
In the twilight of her porn acting career in December 2018, Joy, the ex-porn actress, twice experienced violence, allegedly committed by her former boss, Tobiloba Isaac Jolaoso. Jolaoso, commonly called King Tblak HOC, is one of the earliest performers in the African industry.
“I was cheated and assaulted as a porn actress. I was disrespected, and I was not even paid completely. I don’t think anyone should go into it. I decided to quit when I took a look at my life and cautioned myself. I didn’t know what I was doing,” a repentant Joy confesses.
The matter was reported to security operatives at the Bar Beach Police Station in Victoria Island, Lagos, although Jolaoso never publicly responded to the allegation.
Source: Facebook
Among some of society's double standards faced by women, publicly humiliating female pornstars, while hailing or even ‘envying’ their male counterparts, is one of them.
In 2019, when Joy decided to quit acting in porn officially, slut shaming followed.
Freethinkers Adult Film Production (alias Casted Raw), Joy’s former hirers, reacted to an X (formerly Twitter) video depicting Joy in good spirits by aiming a dig at her. She retorted, saying the ‘company’ was obsessed with her. Freethinkers then followed with “Have you forgotten it was one of our actors that f**ked you? Even sef, the guy no fit remember say you exist (sic).”
Joy still holds grudges against the Nigerian adult entertainment industry; she would have gladly made more revelations when I approached her twice in three years. But on Saturday, October 11, 2025, she tells me that she is “on a spiritual journey to enhance my spiritual path.”
Source: Twitter
Nigeria’s unregulated porn industry
Pornography, as a subject, stirs significant moral debate in Nigeria. Its spread is inexorably linked to the development of technology and the internet's structure.
Source: Original
In an exclusive chat with this correspondent in January 2021, prominent adult film actress Juliet Simeon shared that the proportion of Nigerian men and women in the porn audience is high.
“I don’t know why: on public platforms, many Nigerians display hate towards us, but a lot of them still watch porn secretly. Maybe because of the way we open our bodies for everyone to see, I can't really say."
Source: Original
In the West African nation, the perception of pornography is heavily influenced by cultural and religious norms, which often view such materials as morally corrosive.
Making porn is frowned upon in Nigeria, according to an Abuja-based lawyer, Hammad Abdulrasheed, who tells me that production of pornography is illegal.
He elucidates: “This is based on provisions of the law. The issue of adult pornography is addressed under Section 24 of the Cybercrime Act. It mentions ‘any person who knowingly or intentionally sends a message or other matters by means of the computer system or network that is grossly offensive, pornographic, or of an indecent, obscene, or menacing character, or causes any message or matter to be so sent’ as culpable.”
Upon conviction, a person is liable to a fine of approximately N7 million ($4,793) or a term of imprisonment for three years.
Source: Facebook
Abdulrasheed notes that the criminal code also addressed the issue of pornography.
“According to Section 233C, it talks about the test of obscenity. However, the main provision is Section 233D, which prohibits the publication of obscene matter, in which pornography is part of it.”
In June 2024, the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) warned filmmakers against producing and distributing pornography and ‘other illegal content’. The agency stated that it is collaborating with relevant security agencies to track down the filmmakers and production companies involved and will not hesitate to ensure that those already identified face the full force of the law. Regardless, promoters home and abroad venture into this underground enterprise, and certain x-rated sites rank among the most visited by people in the country.
I asked Benjamin Hundeyin, spokesperson of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), what steps the agency is taking to track errant filmmakers and production companies, but received no response from either email or WhatsApp inquiries.
Drawing data from Semrush, a leading search engine optimisation (SEO) platform, I found that XVideos, a website that hosts pornographic content, was among the top 5 most visited websites in Nigeria in September 2025 (for all industries), with 36.72 million visits. Another free pornographic video viewing website, XNXX, made the top 10, recording 16.11 million visits. No Nigerian online newspaper comes close to the two during the period under review.
Source: Original
The same pattern was observed in the preceding month as XVideos and XNXX outranked Nigeria’s digital news platforms.
Semrush calculated the data using petabytes of anonymised clickstream data collected from millions of real user journeys.
What are the downsides of these traffic-pulling adult sites? I look into them.
Source: Original
Children’s easy access to x-rated content online
More than half of 12-13-year-old boys and a third of girls the same age visit porn sites every month. With just a few clicks, they can access them via cell phones or computers.
Without question, the porn industry worldwide cares more about money than they do about people. It is a completely capitalist, commercial enterprise.
My investigation found that XVideos particularly lacks robust measures to safeguard children in Nigeria and their rights. This includes a lack of appropriate and advanced age verification methods to stop children from accessing adult material. In the United Kingdom (UK), users cannot access pornographic materials without presenting their photo ID or running credit card checks. That is not the case in Nigeria.
Source: Original
As one of the most visited porn sites worldwide, XVideos attracts billions of views every year. Yet its popularity comes with hidden risks, ranging from malware embedded in ads to data tracking and potential legal issues. For adults, browsing may seem harmless at first, but privacy violations and security threats can quickly become real concerns.
For parents, the risks go even further. Children and teens are prone to seeing explicit content on XVideos with just a few clicks, which may impact their mental health, shape unrealistic views of intimacy, and expose them to online predators.
Dr Hassana Shuaibu, the senior programme officer at ACE Charity, Abuja, a not-for-profit which works at the intersection of children and women, describes the situation as “extremely alarming”.
“The lack of age verification on adult sites in Nigeria exposes children to harmful content that not only severely corrupts their minds but is a precursor to porn addiction, which has severe complications,” she tells me. “It is a gross violation of their right to be protected from pornographic material as enshrined in the Child Rights Act. Therefore, stronger online regulations need to be enforced and public sensitisation to this growing danger conducted.”
Source: Facebook
The child rights expert challenged Nigerian authorities to, as a matter of urgency, protect children and adolescents from “the dangers that lurk online”.
“It is their right to be protected,” Shuaibu stresses. “Sites without high-level age verification should be shut down and public sensitisation about this danger should be conducted so parents can be aware.”
Porn not as rewarding as you think…
In the last couple of years, Mia Khalifa, the Lebanese-American retired pornography performer, has garnered media attention when she exposed how little the money she made from porn is compared to her fame as the second most popular actress on Pornhub, an aggregator site for x-rated content.
Khalifa shattered any illusions regarding the pay in the adult-film industry in 2019 when she revealed that she received about $12,000 for about a dozen shoots over three months before she left the industry in early 2015, and never a “penny again.”
How that exactly happens, a still top-ranked presence bringing in cash for websites, yet leaving her without a cut, prompted questions over the secretive multibillion-dollar porn industry that reaps monster profits and keeps some women trying to outrun their past at the forefront of their audience.
On Pornhub alone, she accrued an eye-popping 784 million views. But she does not get any residuals from that site or others, Khalifa told The Washington Post.
Initially, the public shock was simply over her earnings, but the more Khalifa spoke, the more it became clear that her experience in professional porn is an example of how the industry preys on young women.
It was the same thoughts echoed by Wunmi, the Nigerian adult content creator, who explained that she has deprioritised XVideos. Now, she focuses on online content platforms like OnlyFans and Fansly, where she has a considerable amount of control over her earnings.
“XVideos didn’t pay me much. For someone who is doing porn, they expected me to do so much work for so little amount of money.”
Nowadays, Nigerian adult content creators use a variety of platforms, including OnlyFans, All Access Fans, Fansly, Fancentro, and Youfanly, which are popular for direct monetisation. People from most parts of the world patronise them. These adult performers upload erotic content, which include one-off sales of videos and images through direct-messaging function, and make money monthly. They also use social media apps, such as X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, to sell their ‘services’.
Nigerian porn establishments’ secretive organisational structure allows them to avoid tax and legislative accountability. That may soon change as new laws in the country do not differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate income sources. Taiwo Oyedele, the chairman of the presidential fiscal policy and tax reforms committee, noted that the enacted tax reform laws, signed in June, make no distinction.
The reforms consolidate four key legislations: the Nigerian Tax Act (NTA), the Nigerian Tax Administration Act (NTAA), the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act (JRBEA), and the Nigerian Revenue Service (Establishment) Act (NRSEA).
The NTA and NTAA are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026, while the JRBEA and NRSEA will commence on June 26, 2025.
Responding to questions from both in-person and virtual participants during a session on “Tax Compliance and Planning” with the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), streamed on the religious group’s YouTube page on September 26, Oyedele stated that anyone providing a service would be required to pay tax.
He explained:
“If someone is rendering a service, such a person will pay tax. There is this extreme example that you probably should not even say in a church, but just to bring it home. If somebody is doing ‘runs’ with girls, they go and look for men to sleep with. You know, that is a service. They will pay tax on it.
“One thing about the tax law is that it does not separate whether what you are doing is legitimate. It does not even ask you. It just asks you whether you have an income.”
Despite being arguably Nigeria’s biggest players, the organogram of Freethinkers Adult Film Production and Wild Lagos Productions is virtually invisible to the public. The only visible people are the active actors and actresses who ‘have sold their souls to the devil’ — as relayed by Mareme Edet, known professionally as Uglygalz.
Source: Facebook
Uglygalz explains in an interview on the Outside the Box podcast: “I have had so many friends that stopped and started, including me. I stopped and started so many times.
"When I told them I am a good girl, I am from a Christian home, I am a nice girl, I want to do porn in a way that if I should get someone that wants to get married to me tomorrow, I’d be able to back out, and then they are like ‘Oh, you are stupid, you are useless’, especially ‘Maami Igbagbo’ (Elizabeth Ajibola). ‘We have sold our souls to the devil. ’ I’m like, I am not. Even my then-boyfriend, Krissyjoh (real name Chris John), he keeps repeating it that anybody doing porn has sold their soul to the devil. I am like, I have not sold my own soul.”
This is the first of a two-part series.
Proofreading by James Ojo, copy editor at Legit.ng.
Source: Legit.ng
