Nigeria’s fertility scam: ‘Pregnant’ for 15 months

Chioma is adamant that Hope, the infant boy she is holding in her arms, is her son.  After eight years of failed makes an attempt to conceive, she sees him as her miracle child.

“I’m the owner of my baby,” she says defiantly.

She’s sitting subsequent to her husband, Ike, within the workplace of a Nigerian state official who spends the very best a part of an hour interrogating the couple.

As the commissioner for girls affairs and social welfare in Anambra state, Ify Obinabo has loads of expertise in resolving household disputes – however that is no bizarre disagreement.

Five members of Ike’s household, who’re additionally current within the room, don’t imagine Hope is the couple’s organic youngster, as Chioma and Ike declare.

Chioma claims to have “carried” the kid for about 15 months. The commissioner and Ike’s household are in disbelief on the absurdity of the declare.

Chioma says she confronted strain from Ike’s household to conceive. They even requested him to marry one other girl.

In her desperation, she visited a “clinic” providing an unconventional “treatment” – an outlandish and disturbing rip-off preying on girls determined to turn into moms that includes the trafficking of infants.

The BBC was allowed by authorities to sit down in on the commissioner’s dialogue with Chioma as a part of our investigation into the cryptic being pregnant rip-off.

We have modified the names of Chioma, Ike and others on this article to guard them from reprisal of their communities.

Nigeria has one of many highest start charges on the earth, with girls usually going through social strain to conceive and even ostracisation or abuse if they can not.

Under this strain, some girls go to extremes to understand their dream of motherhood.

For over a 12 months, BBC Africa Eye has been investigating the “cryptic pregnancy” rip-off.

Scammers posing as medical doctors or nurses persuade girls that they’ve a “miracle fertility treatment” assured to get them pregnant. The preliminary “treatment” often prices lots of of {dollars} and consists of an injection, a drink, or a substance inserted into the vagina.

None of the ladies or officers we spoke to throughout our investigation know for certain what’s in these medicine. But some girls have informed us they led to modifications of their our bodies – reminiscent of swollen stomachs – which additional satisfied them they had been pregnant.

Women given the “treatment” are warned to not go to any typical medical doctors or hospitals, as no scan or being pregnant check would detect “the baby”, which the scammers declare is rising outdoors the womb.

When it’s time to “deliver” the infant, girls are informed labour will solely start as soon as they’re induced with a “rare and expensive drug”, requiring additional fee.

Accounts of how the “delivery” occurs range, however all are disturbing. Some are sedated solely to get up with a Caesarean-like incision mark. Others say they’re given an injection that causes a drowsy, hallucinatory state by which they imagine they’re giving start.

Either approach, the ladies find yourself with infants they’re alleged to have given start to.

Chioma tells commissioner Obinabo that when her time to “deliver” got here, the so-called physician injected her within the waist and informed her to push. She doesn’t spell out how she ended up with Hope, however says the supply was “painful”.

Our crew manages to infiltrate one in all these secretive “clinics” – connecting with a girl often known as “Dr Ruth” to her purchasers – by posing as a pair who’ve been making an attempt to conceive for eight years.

This so-called “Dr Ruth” runs her clinic each second Saturday of the month in a dilapidated resort within the city of Ihiala, within the south-eastern Anambra state. Outside her room, dozens of ladies await her within the resort corridors, some with visibly protruding stomachs.

The entire ambiance is buzzing with positivity. At one level, enormous celebrations erupt contained in the room after a girl is informed she is pregnant.

When it’s our undercover reporters’ flip to see her, “Dr Ruth” tells them the therapy is assured to work.

She affords the lady an injection, claiming it should allow the couple to “select” the intercourse of their future child – a medical impossibility.

After they flip down the injection, “Dr Ruth” arms them a sachet of crushed capsules in addition to some extra capsules for them to take at house, together with directions on when to have intercourse.

This preliminary therapy prices 350,000 naira ($205; £165).

Our undercover reporter neither takes the medicine nor follows any of “Dr Ruth’s” directions and returns to see her 4 weeks later.

After operating a tool that appears like an ultrasound scanner throughout our reporter’s abdomen, a sound like a heartbeat is heard and “Dr Ruth” congratulates her on being pregnant.

They each cheer with pleasure.

After delivering the excellent news, “Dr Ruth” explains how they’ll have to pay for a “scarce” and costly drug wanted for the infant to be born, costing someplace between 1.5 and two million naira ($1,180; £945).

Without this drug, the being pregnant might prolong past 9 months, “Dr Ruth” claims with disregard for scientific truth, including: “The baby will become malnourished – we’d need to build it up again.”

“Dr Ruth” has not responded to allegations the BBC has put to her.

The extent to which the ladies concerned genuinely imagine the claims is unclear.

But clues as to why they’d be vulnerable to such brazen lies can, partly, be present in on-line teams the place disinformation round being pregnant is widespread.

Cryptic being pregnant is a recognised medical phenomenon, by which a girl is unaware of her being pregnant till the late phases.

But throughout our investigation, the BBC discovered widespread misinformation in Facebook teams and pages about the sort of being pregnant.

One girl from the US, who dedicates her complete web page to her “cryptic being pregnant”, claims to have been pregnant “for years” and that her journey cannot be explained by science.

In closed groups on Facebook, many posts use religious terminology to hail the bogus “treatment” as a “miracle” for those who’ve been unable to conceive.

All of this misinformation helps solidify women’s belief in the scam.

Members of these groups are not only from Nigeria, but also from South Africa, the Caribbean, and the US.

The scammers also sometimes manage, and post in, these groups, enabling them to reach out to women expressing an interest in the “therapy”.

Once someone expresses readiness to start the scam process, they are invited into more secure WhatsApp groups. There, admins share information about “cryptic clinics” and what the process involves.

Authorities tell us that to complete the “treatment”, the scammers need new-born babies and to do that they seek out women who are desperate and vulnerable, many of them young and pregnant, in a country where abortion is illegal.

In February 2024, the Anambra state health ministry raided the facility where Chioma “delivered” Hope.

The BBC obtained footage of the raid, which showed a huge complex made up of two buildings.

In one were rooms containing medical equipment – apparently for clients – while in the other were several pregnant women being kept against their will. Some were as young as 17.

Some tell us they were tricked into going there, unaware their babies would be sold to the scammer’s clients.

Others, like Uju, which is not her real name, felt too scared to tell their family they were pregnant and sought a way out. She said she was offered 800,000 naira ($470; £380) for the baby.

Asked if she regrets her decision to sell her baby, she says: “I’m still confused.”

Commissioner Obinabo, who has been part of efforts in her state to crack down on the scam, says scammers prey on vulnerable women like Uju to source the babies.

At the end of a tense interrogation, commissioner Obinabo threatens to take away baby Hope from Chioma.

But Chioma pleads her case, and the commissioner eventually accepts her explanation that she is a victim herself and that she hadn’t realised what was going on.

On this basis she allows Chioma and Ike to keep the baby – unless the biological parents come forward to claim him.

But unless attitudes towards women, infertility, reproductive rights and adoption change, scams like this will continue to thrive, experts warn.

You can watch the iPlayer documentary here and a YouTube model of this story here.