“I moved to Nigeria in 2018, and I lived there for several years. This includes the COVID years, and I was not mentally prepared for the things that I would see. During the lockdown, particularly, there were so many police busts surrounding child kidnappers caught in the streets with both live and dead children in sacks, poor parents trying to discretely sell their children for money, not realizing it was an undercover police sting (some were sold for as little as N60,000 = $35).”
-from an Our Weekly interview with Chidinma Ifunanyachi.
Settling into a new country is daunting enough, more so within the confines of Sub-Saharan Africa. For British native Chidinma Ifunanyachi, a London native of Nigerian ancestry, relocation into a new life in Lagos brought with it the adjustments of dealing with a tropical climate and the realities of that country’s economic instability, which she handled successfully. The global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic brought additional challenges to her livelihood. It resulted in a condition that transcended boundaries, both geographic and language-based, leaving her broke.
The difficultties she faced naturally garnered the attention of her landlady, of course, which in turn led to an unusual proposition from a female acquaintance. In exchange for transporting a newborn infant between two of the 36 regional states that make up Nigeria, she would receive monetary compensation. In essence she would become a “transporter.”
The reasoning behind this was simple. As Chidinma was a young woman of childbearing age, she would not garner as much attention as the elderly ladies in their 60s would; who approached her with this solution. Coupled with the fact that she spoke the queen’s English and possessed a valid passport, made her an ideal candidate for the nefarious enterprise. Chidinma declined the offer.
A hungry man is a desperate man:
Poverty & shame
“Baby factories are thought to have arisen to meet two needs. First, the social stigma attached to desperate teenagers with unwanted pregnancies, who are convinced to give up their babies for financial benefit. Second, the high demand for babies by infertile couples with a desire to complete their family and thereby fulfill a crucial social obligation.”
—from “Baby factories taint surrogacy in Nigeria,” in the Reproductive BioMedicine Online, 2016.
In spite of Chidinma turning down this proposal, the concept stayed with her as she relocated to the state of Enugu in southeastern Nigeria to pursue her new vocation of socially conscious filmmaker. Chidinma was not totally naive about the subject, however.
“Being brought up in a Nigerian home, my first introduction to child trafficking/ sacrifice was from 1990s Nollywood movies.”
Enugu has become a popular location for film production in the Nollywood (a portmanteau nickname of Nigeria and Hollywood) industry due to its relatively low cost of living. This in turn makes it attractive for the underground network of baby harvesting, defined in this case as the systematic procurement and sale of human children in the developing world, for adoption or other purposes.
To understand the growth of this ominous practice one must understand the realities of life in contemporary Nigeria, as Chidinma explains. “The middle class system doesn’t really exist anymore in Nigeria-you’re really wealthy or you’re broke.” Nigeria doesn’t lack for natural resources and material wealth, with last year’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $362.81 billion topping the African continent, per the World Bank. Like most of the so-called “Third World” countries, little of this filters down to the lower classes.
She quickly learned that poverty caused desperation for many people after she relocated to Nigeria. Settling in meant learning survival skills such as having a hyper awareness of one’s surroundings, as the snatching of bags, phones, and other forms of larceny are common, along with various forms of predation by roving bands of youth gangs.
The conservative nature of Nigerian society also added to the milieu of her experience. In Nigerian culture, infertility is viewed as being shameful, because in Chidinma’s words, “…your body can’t do what it was designed to do by God, which is procreation.”
For the affluent, these circumstances–along with the lax governmental infrastructure–are a motivation to realize their parental aspirations when their desperately desired children cannot be obtained by conventional methods. Her curiosity whetted, Chidinma enlisted a cadre of her film colleagues to set up her own investigation. This in turn led to an expedition to a marketplace in the heart of Enugu, procurement of clandestine phone numbers, and finally to a dilapidated hut isolated in the outskirts of nowhere.
These novice investigators staged a stakeout with no fruitful results. Attempts to notify the authorities also were futile, due to the rampant corruption that is part and parcel to the Nigerian infrastructure.
An illicit business model
“…research conducted by NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) operating in the area such as UNICEF reveal that child harvesting is the country’s third-most common crime behind financial fraud and drug trafficking.”
-from Nigeria: West Africa’s Hub for Child Harvesting, April 15, 2021, by
—Ana Maria Baloi for Grey Dynamics.
The females who inhabit these “facilities” arrive there by various means. They are the unfortunates who’ve violated the taboo against pre-marital sex frowned upon by both the Christian and Muslim populations which dominate Nigerian society. Disapproving families can send their wayward offspring off for a designated period until the evidence of their misdeeds disappears and they can return to “normal life.”
Perhaps more insidiously— people who are specifically indigent — may rent out their daughters for a set amount of money for “baby harvesting,” with the “product” taken away for whatever commercial purposes the proprietors intend. Chidinma suggests one possible destination for the product of this black market enterprise.
“Nigeria is a country that lacks a national registry for organ donation or transplantation. With no donors list and no registry, what do you do if you need an organ?”
There is also another category, “freelancers” operating on their own to produce offspring for monetary income, and presumably reap the benefits for their own advantage.
One of these individuals started out at the age of 19, and continues to ply her trade today at 25. Her story has been fictionalized by Chidinma Ifunanyachi, and is slated for publication in 2025.
A typical scenario for such a facility might be a house with several bedrooms. Each may contain perhaps a dozen fertile women between the ages of 15 to 25 years old, along with two men employed as “impregnators” to forcibly inseminate females who are not already in that condition. The owner is not present, as a pimp or madam acts as a proxy to arrange for food and other necessities to keep the business going. Doctors and nurses act as support personnel in the execution of this enterprise.
Other similar ventures are disguised as private medical clinics, orphanages, or religious centers. All of this information was garnered via word of mouth, by informants willing to speak with Chidinma on the condition of anonymity.
Exposure to the world:
The power of impactful cinema
“Poverty is a powerful tool of control. Those selling the babies are under socio-economic stress, those who are buying the babies are under cultural stress. The exchange satisfies the needs of both parties.”
—Chidinma Ifunanyachi
Chidinma Ifunanyachi’s initial foray into the realm of social activism was manifested in the completion of a 22 minute short film, “Violated,” which deals with the subject of marital rape, an ordeal experienced by several women she’s met since moving to Nigeria.
Her next project— a fictionalized story of a woman who continues to exploit her body in pursuit of baby harvesting— is being finalized with the hope of being published in 2025.
Her IMDb entry boasts credits as an actress, writer, and producer. Follow her progression at Facebook or Instagram, and the short “Violated” may be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90yTrr3HkFE.
