Nigeria's Baby Farmers
Investigating Nigeria's notorious baby farms and
the criminals who abuse and exploit women for
profit.
It is understandable why a desperate childless
couple might do anything to have a baby, but
those who exploit their unhappiness for profit are
not so easy to forgive.
couple might do anything to have a baby, but
those who exploit their unhappiness for profit are
not so easy to forgive.
In this deeply disturbing episode of Africa
Investigates , Ghana's undercover journalist Anas
Aremeyaw Anas and investigative reporter
Rosemary Nwaebuni team up to identify and
expose some of those those behind Nigeria's
heart-breaking baby trade.
It is a scam that exploits couples desperate for a
baby and young pregnant single mothers - often
stigmatised in a country where abortion is illegal
except in the most dire medical emergency. It is
also a trade that international NGOs have
identified as sinister and out of control.
Filming undercover, the team find bogus doctors
and clinics offering spurious fertility treatments in
return for large amounts of money. In their guise
as a childless couple, Anas and Rosemary are
falsely diagnosed by one dodgy clinician as
being unable to conceive children.
When the footage is reviewed by an official from
Nigeria's Ministry of Health, he is appalled at the
way vulnerable people are being conned. "You
should not allow these people access to the
public," he says.
But worse is to come. The team go on to
uncover orphanages and clinics that act as
brokers for illegal baby sales, by which naive,
greedy or simply desperate young mothers are
"persuaded" to hand over their newborn children
for cash.
FILM-MAKER'S VIEW
By Nonuk Walter
After exposing the dubious and often dangerous
practices of fake doctors in the last season of
Africa Investigates , we reassembled our Nigeria
team and returned to investigate allegations of
medical clinics and orphanages involved in the
illegal sale of newborn babies.
Nigerian journalist Rosemary Nwaebuni had heard
reports of young girls being kept against their
will and forced to produce babies, only for the
children to be sold on to childless couples,
desperate to avoid the public scrutiny and stigma
of legal adoption.
Joining Rosemary once again was renowned
investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas,
fresh from his recent explosive undercover
investigation into judicial corruption in Ghana.
Anas's unique experience and myriad undercover
skills quickly took us to the core of the baby
business.
In parts of Nigeria women who remain childless
face prejudice. It can even arouse suspicion of
witchcraft. Rosemary wanted to show the lengths
that women are prepared to go to achieve
pregnancy; for many, legal adoption is not a
viable solution.
Instead, they turn to so-called "miracle" doctors.
In spite of frequent crackdowns by the
authorities, you don't need to look very hard to
find "miracle" clinics open for business in the
discreet suburbs of Port Harcourt, Aba and Imo
State.
Behind high walls and locked gates, maternity
clinics with reassuring names such as God's Gift
Clinic offer a phantom service. Women are
injected with hormones and unknown concoctions
to make their bellies swell, providing the
appearance of pregnancy. After nine months, the
"miracle" doctors call them back to specially
selected hospitals in Port Harcourt where they
perform a fake birth, making an incision into their
belly to give the appearance of a Caesarean scar
and present them with a baby. Yet, unbeknown to
the parents, the baby is not naturally theirs.
clinics with reassuring names such as God's Gift
Clinic offer a phantom service. Women are
injected with hormones and unknown concoctions
to make their bellies swell, providing the
appearance of pregnancy. After nine months, the
"miracle" doctors call them back to specially
selected hospitals in Port Harcourt where they
perform a fake birth, making an incision into their
belly to give the appearance of a Caesarean scar
and present them with a baby. Yet, unbeknown to
the parents, the baby is not naturally theirs.
Rosemary and Anas presented themselves as a
couple desperate for a child and under pressure
from their parents to produce an heir. The first
character they investigated was a fake pharmacist
with a reputation for miraculous fertility
treatments. After a very brief and clearly bogus
examination, he was quick to diagnose Anas with
a low sperm count and a medical condition
normally associated with women. Artificial
insemination was suggested as the only solution.
In real life, of course, both Anas and Rosemary
have children.
Running parallel to "miracle" doctors is Nigeria's
baby farming industry. One leading anti-child
trafficking expert, Professor Alex Dodoo from the
World Health Organisation's Collaborating Centre
in Ghana told us that the level of baby farms has
reached "epidemic" levels.
We had heard quite a few horrific stories of baby
farms where young girls were being kept and
repeatedly impregnated by their captors to fuel
the booming child trafficking industry and the
area around Port Harcourt was said to be a
hotbed of this secretive trade. In the past two
years, several baby farms have been raided by
the authorities. While the government is eager to
show that it is doing something about human
trafficking - said to be one of the fastest-growing
areas of organised crime in the country - we
wanted to find out if the illegal baby trade was
still going on behind closed doors in hospitals
and orphanages.
To get closer to the traffickers we went
undercover again and visited various orphanages
we had reason to believe were actually front
organisations for baby selling. In each we asked
about adopting a baby at short notice and without
the necessary legal paperwork. At Destiny Child
Orphanage we were quickly offered a "fast-track"
adoption to buy a newborn baby within weeks.
The price was $4,000 for a girl and $5,000 for a
boy. Of course we wanted to meet the mother to
find out what conditions she was living in but
despite our best efforts, excuses were always
found for why that was not possible.
The next organisation on our list was Basic Clinic
run by Dr Ohaeri, a man who had been raided in
the past for his links to the baby trade but was
quickly back working in his clinic. Dr Ohaeri was
initially suspicious and avoided our reporters but
he eventually agreed to meet and offered to help
find us a baby. After our meeting he confirmed
that he had a baby ready and would sell for about
$4,500.
Baby farms have regularly been busted by the
Nigerian authorities - in 2013 one police station
alone said it had taken 106 children into care. But
the business is so profitable that it has proved
very difficult to stamp out. Footage from one
police raid on a maternity home run by Dr James
Ezuma shows his dazzling collection of luxury
cars. It is in sharp contrast to the wretched
conditions in which the expectant mothers -
pregnant girls, ranging in age from 14 to 19 - are
being kept.
It is one of the saddest things to witness that in
societies in which corruption is endemic,
healthcare and childcare systems are prone to the
schemes of the criminal and corrupt. Our
undercover footage of one doctor, whom we
pleaded with to help a childless mother to have a
baby, summed up that abuse of power when he
said: "I am a doctor, I can facilitate
