The baby factories of the South-East in Nigeria

| credits: Bennett Omeke

For the umpteenth time this year, police investigators raided another baby factory in Owerri, Imo State, freeing 16 pregnant teenagers whose babies were allegedly going to be sold.

The Owerri bedlam, though shocking, is no longer news. There is a now familiar pattern that always ends the same way: the raid of the baby factories, the “parade” of the victims and the perpetrators, the Police statement and … nothing happens afterwards.

There is barely any follow-up as to what became of everyone involved. Did any of the proprietors of the baby factories and their collaborators ever go through trial? Between Dr. Ben Agbo, who gave the curious motive of selling infants on “humanitarian grounds”, and James Ezuma, the lately accused, who cannot account for the whereabouts of 19-year-old Chinaza Nnachi’s two-day-old infant, one sees a larger picture of societal decay.

If what have going on in these hospitals are adoption and/or surrogacy of sorts, why do they run underground? If as alleged, the Nigerian Medical Association knew of such acts, warned perpetrators, and withdrew licences, why was Ezuma still allowed to operate an NGO? Besides, why is there never a follow-up that thoroughly investigates all the loose ends? Apart from the celebrated case of Mary Obikoya which Newsline painstakingly investigated and brought to the nation’s consciousness in the 1990s, subsequent cases of child harvesting have barely enjoyed meticulous investigation beyond the customary police statement. For instance, whatever happened to the 23-year-old stud in Enugu State who was alleged to have impregnated the girls in a raided baby factory? Was a DNA test carried out to determine the veracity of the girls’ allegations?

Nagging questions usually follow every raid on the baby factories but one hardly ever gets far. Without the right questions and perhaps answers, how can this recurrent problem be ever fixed?

For instance, are baby factories truly undocumented child adoption agencies like the operators claim? Why are cases of baby factories so prevalent in the South-Eastern part of Nigeria? Is there something peculiar about the zone or they just happen to have a more efficient policing system? Since most of the freed pregnant women are teenagers, one should ask what role the family structure plays in the child harvesting business. Are their parents aware of their daughters’ involvement or do the girls just disappear from home and reappear after nine months with a mother’s body? Were any of the girls ever reported missing prior to each parade?

And why do these teenage girls get pregnant? Economic factors? Naiveté? Peer pressure? Who are even these teenagers? What’s their story? Are they educated? If they go to school, how can the school system be co-opted in fighting teenage pregnancy? Do they receive proper counselling in schools about sex? If not, what feasible solutions to teenage pregnancy? If they don’t go to school, what other viable options can be explored? By the way, is the coyness about sex we exhibit as a society part of the problem? To what degree?

And, very importantly, the always-wondered-but-never-answered question: Who are the buyers and why do they do it? Have the Police ever apprehended a single family that patronised these Dr. Baby-Sellers? If yes, what’s their story? If no, why not? I have read a number of articles suggesting that these babies are used for diabolic rituals but I find this highly implausible.

Like the Obikoya saga demonstrates, there is a flourishing black market for selling children in Nigeria. When the story broke, the “mother” was said to be a 65-year-old woman who was bizarrely sharing the “testimony” of a medical miracle that gave her a baby, post-menopause, and unaware discerning minds were paying attention.

She did not know they would not just shout the customary Halleluyahs that accompany these “miracles” in religious places but probe further. The mire got worse as a woman claimed “Baby Mary” as her stolen child and then the biological mother got into the act. It took a bout of DNA tests to trip up the 65-year-old’s “miracle” as a fraud. Since then, other women who have purchased babies would have learnt discretion.

It is important that the baby factories are subjected to more reporting rigour than the usual scanty details such as a one-liner narrative by the pregnant teens and the number of SUVs found belonging to the proprietor of those clinics. Asking the right questions will have far-reaching implications legally, socially and even medically. For me, there is a nagging question of why people go to the likes of Agbo and Ezuma when they can adopt a child through official channels? Yes, the laws about adopting children in Nigeria can be tedious but it is hardly easy anywhere in the world. And if it is too cumbersome, what changes can be made?

So, if people buy babies because they cannot conceive, why can’t they conceive? Culturally, people tend to shrink at the question of infertility because it is a taboo subject. For men, it goes straight to the question of manhood and virility and so they tend to shy away from it. For women, the social consequences are far worse. But I wonder, if the baby factories thrive mostly in the South-East, and they buy babies because of infertility, does that mean there is a peculiar problem of infertility in the zone? If this is so, what factors –environmental or otherwise- contribute to it? Or, their customers are not limited to the zone, it just forms a base from where children are distributed (inter)nationally?

The case of baby factories, especially from South-Eastern Nigeria is becoming commonplace but I fear it is not getting as much seriousness it deserves from the state, the civil society and the media. It needs to be subjected to broader enquiries than the sensationalism of the raids which, from the look of things, will soon wear out with frequency of reporting. I commend the Police who have carried out numerous sting operations and exposed the operations of these baby factories but I am afraid too much effort is spent cutting off branches rather than tackling the actual roots. We need a more nuanced understanding of the socio-cultural factors that help them thrive and deal with them appropriately through legal, social, political and cultural channels.