Curbing the Baby Factory Menace by Empowering Families

Tapping Into The Power Of Families In Curbing The Baby Factory Menace
~Unyime-Ivy
OGBAKO NDI NNE “The Baby Factory Conundrum”
Tapping Into The Power Of Families In Curbing The Baby Factory Menace ~Unyime-Ivy King | Executive Director; Protection Plus Services Company | Managing Director ; Heritage Treasure Trove
Communications Limited | 0703 094 0398 | unyimek2007@yahoo.com | @unyimek

“My mom held me in her stomach
for 9 months, she watched her
feet swell, she struggled to climb
stairs, she got breathless quick,
and she suffered many sleepless
nights. She loved me despite what
I've done to her, she became my
nurse, my chef, my teacher and
my friend. She struggled for me.
While most of us take our mom
for granted, there are people who
have never seen theirs.” ~
Unknown.

PREAMBLE:
The word, „mother,‟ conjures in our minds the imagery of warmth, safety, love and untiring sacrifice. It is a word that
is associated with nobility and life. I call women, „keepers of the hearth.‟ It is interesting to note that we have top
words that come from the word mother such as: matrix, amateur, alma mater, marigold, matrimony, argiope (nymph),
nun, cassiope (a shrub), matter, all of which are invariably connected, one way or the other. Yet, for the hapless,
misinformed, and ignorant teenage girls, who are victims of the baby factory menace, all the positive imageries,
feelings and thoughts which the word „mother‟ evokes, have been sullied by the inhumane practice perpetuated by
patrons of the numerous baby factories that have sprouted all over our clime.

THE BABY FACTORY MENACE

THE BABY FACTORY MENACE:
These baby harvesting centres which usually disguise as maternity homes, orphanages, social welfare
homes, clinics, and even water bottling factories, are run by a well-organized cartel of traffickers with brutal
efficiency some of them being medical doctors. They run their „business‟ with the help of employees who are
mostly men hired for the production of babies. We live in a society which sees childlessness as a major
stigma; adoption of children is also stigmatised as I have encountered people who said to me, that they
would never adopt another person‟s child because they did not want any „strange blood‟ in the family . For a
few enlightened ones who dare to venture in this direction, the process involved in getting a child is a
tedious one, and in typical Nigerian fashion, once legitimate channels become challenging to acces, a black
market alternative takes bold steps in and does not just remain in the background, but overtakes the
legitimate channels. Some of the most notorious of the syndicates are Dr. Orikara, and a woman known as
“Madam One Thousand.” It is disturbing to think of this disgraceful exploitation of women‟s bodies, and
the reduction of babies, freely given by God, to mere commodities. These girls give birth in the factory's self-
styled maternity wards, with probably a doctor and midwife, or at most, a traditional birth attendant present
at the birth to ensure that the investment yields a viable product. The mother is not even allowed to see her
child before it is handed over to the couple in a trade by barter exchange for a large envelope of cash. These
traffickers have doctors and midwives in their employ that will vouch that the baby is the adoptive woman's
own for the purposes of obtaining a birth certificate.

It's a dirty business. Amid this backdrop of bribery, misery and menace, a child is bought by
someone who will be entirely ignorant of the wretched circumstances of the child's conception.
Yet, what of the baby's natural mother? Where do these babies really end? Some are used for
rituals; others become toys in the hands of pedophiles, sex workers, porn stars. We need to
understand why these people are involved in all these. My simple answer is poverty, ignorance,
and loss of values; poverty of the mind caused by depravity. People see wrong, recognize it is
wrong but choose to do wrong. Many who have the money for these back yard adoptions, smile
home with the babies- but at the expense of exploited women who have been forced into the
production line of some nondescript baby factory.

CHILD TRAFFICKING

A FORM OF CHILD TRAFFICKING:
I choose to call it as it is so we are brought as women to the knowledge of how gross and gruesome this
problem is, and its adverse effect on not just our society yet also our continent. This has become a serious
challenge to our family ideals. We cannot afford to fold our hands and watch because a threat to one, is a
threat to all, whether we admit it or not. Opportunists now exploit pregnant teenagers who are broke, whose
parents do not want to deal with the reality of their mistakes, orphans who have no one to care for them, or
are experiencing abject poverty, girls who sometimes want to act or play victim to their immorality, or want to
keep a face with society, to maximize profit. These unfortunate young women, have become black market
commodities of an illegal adoption market, either through their own ignorance or the exploitation of
unscrupulous elements. Some of them are trafficked, while others are turned into baby-making machines.
This also accounts for the emergence of baby factories in Igbo land where babies are literally produced and
sold. This is a direct attack on the Maker and Giver of life. Marriage is not an issue here. Instead,
promiscuity, harlotry and surrogacy have destroyed marital connections, and invariably the family.

In my book BURNING HURT, I intricately
and extensively took out time to delve into
the issues that make the dead live. You
would wonder how a dead man can live.
Yes a lot of us have lost our consciences
and our minds yet we are living in our
homes, communities and societies. Death
my fellow women of the conscience is a
death of a mind. When one dies he loses
his breath so we think, it’s not true we die
when we lose the will to live right, act
right and do right. That’s death. Little
wonder human beings in the 21st century
would wake up determinant to reinvent
slave trade and human trafficking in an
anniversary to Hitler in Africa indeed
Nigeria.

DISINTEGRATION OF THE FAMILY & ITS VALUES.

DISINTEGRATION OF THE FAMILY & ITS VALUES.
Thriving communities are founded on healthy marriages and families. The family is the nucleus of civilization
and the basic social unit of society. For a civilization to succeed, the family must succeed, and right now,
families are in trouble and highly dysfunctional- a theme I explored in Burning Hurt. I used fiction to show
just how dysfunctional family interactions hurt the larger society. In the same way, I see the growth of this
baby factory menace as an indicator of just how troubled the family unit is. In Africa, we had a diverse family
system which saw sex and marriage as sacred realities. The procreative function had a sense of sacredness
and sex was a taboo subject, which was not to be played with. Parents were careful about expressing any type
of public display of sexual familiarity before their children. Virginity was held in high esteem. If a girl came to
marriage as a virgin, the dowry that her suitor's family had paid would have to be increased. In some tribes,
for instance, her mother might be given a cow as a tribute to her successful upbringing of the girl. In such a
case, the fact other virginity would be a matter of public knowledge, and would earn her special respect from
her in-laws. Within marriage itself, it was an accepted norm that there must be periodic abstinence; for
instance during weaning periods, or for specifically religious motives (e.g., during drought) as a sacrifice to
obtain favours from the gods.
The sexual permissiveness that has spread through the West in the past 20 or 30 years is beginning to make
serious inroads into African societies and gradually eroding our family values. The age long practice of
brandishing a „bloodied white handkerchief‟ after the wedding night, to signify that the bride was a virgin, has
become almost extinct in our culture and even some churches who extol the many benefits of premarital
chastity are learning to turn a blind eye to brides who are sporting a big belly on the wedding day, especially
with members of great means. Many relationships have died before they even begun because fertility tests
showed up infertility in either of the couple. I said all that to bring us to the realization that we have lost our
family, not in death but in community. We are all living individualists…if I am wrong tell me then, who are
the women that run the baby factories? Who are the men that impregnate or run the merchandise? Who are
the girls that go to sell in a bid to save face, make money or stand up clean to society? Who are the boys that
are sowing wild oats?

CAUSES OF CHILD TRAFFICKING

CAUSES OF THIS CHILD TRAFFICKING
1. Ignorance leading to diabolism | children used for rituals | Son-preference damages maternal health,
makes marriage trickier for women, increases polygamy and alters the institution of child-fostering,
which is widespread in West Africa
2. Widespread poverty sparking the push-and-pull factors to urban centres.
3. Lack of legal frameworks and weak policy implementation. | Poor reporting and monitoring of cases by
law enforcement agencies.
4. High level of illiteracy, unemployment and poor standards of living.
5. Increase taste for materialistic values among youths aggravated by peer pressure.
6. High school drop-out rates, couple with long closure of higher institutions of learning.
7. Abuse of the common practice of placement and fostering, along with weakened extended family safety
net. Stigmas against open and legal adoptions
8. Poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance of desperate parents who traffic their children for money, not realizing
the full implications.
9. Huge Cost required in seeking medical assistance despite great advancements in medical sciences to
assist barren couples. InVitro Fertilization (IVF) for instance, cost nothing less than N1m for each
attempt. Stigma against infertility among couples
10. Stigmas against proper sex education for teenagers and babies born outside a marriage

This heinous crime, which is really an expansion of child-trafficking, seems to be growing without adequate
measures in place to curb its growth and is adding to other societal plagues like, kidnapping, insurgency and
oil bunkering. The United Nations says that it ranks third after drug trafficking and fraud, as a most common
crimes in Nigeria, despite a 2003 law prohibiting it. According to the European Union, among African nations,
this crime is most common in Nigeria. UNESCO officially traces the beginning of this scourge to 2006 and
mentioned Abia, Ebonyi, and Lagos specifically. In all the cases reported, a similar pattern was identified.
Pregnant teenagers or adult women, who did not want the children for different reasons, in a trade by barter
style, signed away their claims on the babies after selling them to doctors, nurses, orphanages, or clinics,
who would in turn „manage‟ the pregnancy and sell the babies to couples who needed children.
Article 3 of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons especially
women and children, Section 50 of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and
Administration Act, 2003 of Nigeria defines trafficking as including “all acts
and attempted acts involved in the recruitment, transportation within or across Nigerian borders, purchase,
sale, transfer, receipt or harbouring of a person involving the use of deception, coercion or debt bondage for
the purpose of placing or holding the person whether for or not involving servitude in force or bonded labour,
or in slavery-like conditions.” The Child‟s
Rights Act (Cap 198) Laws of the Federation of Nigeria also criminalizes exploitative child labour and other
forms of child abuse hitherto left unpunished by the Criminal Code.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Campaign by governments and civil society groups against abortion in schools and everywhere they can
reach young girls making it clear to them that it could lead to childlessness later in life. These abortions
are the MAIN CAUSE of this mass childlessness in marriage.
2. Adoption should be explained and promoted to educate the populace. Official adoption is better than
buying babies, who will most likely grow up psychologically damaged. Like most ills in the land, this is
imported. Not long ago, women who could not have babies, but had the money, simply told people that
they were pregnant and would travel to some country, preferably, United States and stay for 9 months,
adopt a baby and return to Nigeria. However, with visas becoming more difficult to come by and smart
alecs becoming smarter, patronising this Nigerian style adoption seemed like a cheaper solution and more
real. Government should revisit child adoption laws and provide foster homes where distressed girls can
go and get help if they are burdened with unwanted pregnancy.
3. Massive education of rural dwellers especially, and like I mentioned in Burning Hurt, cottage skills
acquisition centres can be set up in villages to train and empower its inhabitants.
4. A hand written letter to your local Representative is the strongest form of action you can take to support
against the baby factory campaign. Your Representatives are more likely to respond because you have
taken the time and effort to sit down and write it. Be sure to mention that you live in your
Representative's constituency.
5. Report suspicious health activities to the authorities so that they investigate.

ALTERNATIVES FOR SAFE MOTHERHOOD

ALTERNATIVES FOR SAFE MOTHERHOOD
Surogacy | Proper Adoption - There's nothing bad in out rightly adopting a child. An obstacle is that the
adopting couples are usually inundated with rigorous demands by child-adoption agencies. Again, official
adoption procedure that is managed by state governments, are excessively bureaucratic such that the
adoptive parents are expected to meet and fulfil the basic rights and duties of the adopted child. And in the
process of disbursing of wills and settlements, the adopted child must be treated as a lawful child of the
adoptive parents, the same way as the biological child and not as a stranger.
Opting for the assisted birth option like the InVitro Fertilization(IVF) procedure.
Strategies
• Providing poor communities, access to qualitative basic education and health services.
• Partnership and alliance building with NGOs and other agencies for children and women.
• Institutional capacity building and follow up on the Libreville Platform of Action.
• Networking with ILO, ECOWAS, UNIFEM, UNODCP and Embassies to promote public awareness.
• Materials and technical support to government agencies and NGOs for rescue, rehabilitation and
reintegration.
• Research, monitoring and Evaluation.
• Promoting regional and bilateral agreements of monitoring human trafficking.
• Facilitating the establishment of an NGO on Child Protection and a Technical Support Network.
• Provision of life skills and credit facilities to out-of-school youth from poor families.

AGENCIES TACKLING CHILD/WOMEN TRAFFICKING

AGENCIES TACKLING CHILD/WOMEN TRAFFICKING
• The Presidency (through a Special Presidential Committee on Human Trafficking, Child Labour and
Slavery)
• Federal ministry of Women Affairs and Youth Development
• Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity
• Federal Ministry of Justice
• Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation
• Nigeria Customs and Immigration
• Nigeria Police Commission
• National Boundary Commission
• NGOs – WOTCLEF (Abuja), Idia Renaissance (Edo State), Heartland Care Foundation (Imo State),
ANPPCAN (Enugu), Women Consortium of Nigeria (Lagos).
• UNICEF, UNODCP, UNIFEM, ECOWAS, World Bank, IOM, USAID, USDOL, ILO, Embassies of Belgium,
Italy, Britain, Netherlands, and U.S.
• Media Organisations in Nigeria

Both Christianity and Islam condemn slavery and support the abolition of slavery of any kind.
Join our campaign irrespective of your faith to END BABY FACTORY in Nigeria for good.

for helping fight this social menace.

UNYIME-IVY KING
Executive Director; Protection Plus
Services Company | Managing
Director; Heritage Treasure Trove
Communications Limited

Curbing the Baby Factory Menace by Empowering Families

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