The common news headlines that leave the readers stunned often covers incidents of rapes, murders, robberies and other related crimes, but there is more to explore and to see the victims that the world has not given a look and sent help. While the world still battles with these crimes that Nigeria has been facing and caught by another major social vice and “baby factories” have been discovered in parts of Nigeria.
These centres are occupied with pregnant women waiting to deliver the babies who are further sold out if not then raised and used for prostitution. These centres mostly appoint medical practitioners, who coordinate with the delivery and sell the babies. Some of the babies are operated and their body parts are sold to the rich when shipped through the different channels of smuggling human organs around the world.
In many cases, pregnant women are held captive just for this purpose of child selling. For other victims, especially teenagers, they would be given a bait of money and some amount would be paid to forget about their baby after the delivery. It’s a huge call for concern that we need to deal with decisively.
In a recent incidents Police rescued 19 pregnant girls who had been kidnapped and raped from properties in Lagos dubbed “baby factories”. Police officers, acting on a tip off, raided four properties across Lagos and recovered 19 women and four children, who were captives of these ring of terrors.
According to the reports male infants are sold for 500,000 naira (£1,121) and females for 300,000 naira (£672). This is not uncommon for Nigerian authorities to raid “baby factories”. In some cases, unmarried pregnant women are promised healthcare, only for their children to be taken away. In others, women are raped and made pregnant just to get the babies from them after deliveries.
Based on several reports the babies are either sold for adoption, used for child labour or are trafficked to Europe for prostitution or killed for ritual purposes or their body parts are sold.
According to the United Nations Organisation for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO), Nigeria is one of the leaders in human trafficking among African countries. In Nigeria, persons are usually trafficked for the purposes of prostitution, begging, domestic servitude and other types of underpaid and exploited forced labours.
The first case of “baby harvesting” were reported in 2006 by UNESCO in its policy paper “Human trafficking in Nigeria, “Root Causes and Recommendations.” However, the case studies related to “baby harvesting” examined in the policy paper did not evidence exploitation of persons and most likely could amount to sale of infants and illegal international and domestic adoptions.
The causes of the emergence of this crime can be blamed upon the cultural erosion our society is facing. Where productivity and fertility are celebrated, and infertility is feared and tagged as loathsome or more of a deliberate crime that a woman has committed. In many parts of the world being infertile is a ‘sin’, it is considered to be as a bitter fruit one gets because of the sins they have committed in their past lives.
The constant torture that a woman faces as being infertile or incapable of reproduction due to any genuine reason or ‘will’ leaves them no choice, but to accept the unacceptable behaviour of their ‘loved ones’ and in some cases it is considered that the biggest enemy of a women is a women, because if a women doesn’t have baby born on her, her mother-in-law or own family members ladies use derogatory language towards that women (who doesn’t have offspring).
In more families than one, infertility has led to the breakdown of peace or has even bred divorce.
These same ancient cultures have gender discriminatory dimensions in their enthronement of a male child as an-heir-necessity. In other words, any marital union that generates only a girl child or only females are perceived as one without an heir. The stress to have a male child in order to further expand the ancestral history for future generations is a mandate ‘ceremony’.
The activities of baby factories in Nigeria have many faces. At one activity, it has the face of commercial surrogacy, where wombs are rented to help childless couples get babies which they could call their own. At another, it breeds children as new wares for sale for the purpose of trafficking, monetary gains, illegal adoptions, black magic and rituals. Yet at another instance, it is a hiding place for unwanted pregnancies in order to protect the expectant mothers from social ridicule, stigma and psychological trauma.
Economic history of Nigeria can be another cause of these incidents, the poverty stricken and unemployed people out of urgency to survive often chose this path of making babies in order to sell them and earn their bread and butter.
These self-made societal rules turned obligations have contributed to these baby related crimes. The pressure of economic instability, unemployment and other factors are to be highlighted for rooting out this evil practice. It is a major societal malfunction and needs to be investigated with seriousness according to some of the world’s highly educated society persons.
Baby factories also were found in US in 1904 that was ran by Elizabeth Ashmead of Philadelphia, who was arrested with several of her associates. The same kind of baby factories were ran in middle east, but now the world is more educated and we live in a modern era and still we are dealing with 100 years old crimes and traditions said Nigerian born psychologist not releasing his name and identity to our reporter.
If people complaint against these gangs, who run the baby factories either they are killed or vanished from the areas according to one of the police officer speaking to our reporter on the conditions of anonymity.
