The government of Africa’s most populous country is trying to crack down on this hideous trade, which may include the sale of children for use in rituals.
Eze, as we’ll call him, is an agent involved in Nigeria’s notorious baby trafficking ring. In a local restaurant in Nigeria’s southeastern city of Enugu, where dozens of people gather every evening to eat the city’s popular goat-meat pepper soup, and where all kinds of gossip can be heard, I overheard him talking to a middle-aged woman about the possibility of getting her a newborn child of any sex she requires.
I walked up to him after the woman had left, and sought to find out if he truly sells babies.
“Do you want a baby fresh from the womb?” he asked me.
He thought I wanted to buy a baby, but in fact I was on a fact-finding mission.
Eze claimed to be able to get me babies in less than 24 hours. He said that a baby, due to be born in a couple of days, was meant to go to a couple in Sweden but could be mine if I paid the cash in full immediately.
“We’ll get another baby for this couple. They won’t even notice we’ve given them something else,” he said.
I then told Eze I wanted to be taken to the factory, to be sure if the business was genuine before saying anything.
“It wouldn’t work that way,” he said to me. “For security reasons, the women are kept in a hidden place. We don’t want any encounter with the police.”
When I insisted I needed to see the babies before believing him, Eze said he could only take me to the woman who runs the factory, but with a condition that I paid him 10,000 naira (about $50).
I was eager to find out how this trade was carried out, so I paid the money, and off we went—driving for about 20 minutes in a cab through slum neighborhoods late at night.
Eze may be the agent for the business, but he isn’t very familiar with the area where his employer lives. On the two occasions he’s been there, it was under the cover of darkness, he said. He told me his boss deliberately took him to her home at night so he would not recognize the location of the place. That suggests some of the secrecy that shrouds this business.
On the last part of the trip we were guided by a young boy who knew the woman we were looking for. He soon pointed at a gate, saying, simply, “It’s here.”
We met Eze’s “Madam,” a middle-aged woman who introduces herself as “Madam Sarah” and asks us to follow her to the sitting room. She bid us have a seat and then turned to me. “Welcome, my son,” she said.
“I have about six girls in my custody, and they are all heavily pregnant and expecting soon,” she said. “They are not here. I keep them in a secret location.”
As we were talking, a young man walked in and whispered to her. After he had left, Madam Sarah turned to me and said: “That man is the biological father to many of the children we sell,” apparently to convince me that the babies she sells are not stolen.
“His job is to get the girls pregnant, and he knows how to get the job done,” she said with a big smile.
She went on to tell me that she charges 400,000 naira ($2,000) for a girl and 500,000 naira ($2,500) for a boy.
She talked about the cost of caring for the mothers, justifying the price of the babies. “It’s expensive catering for these girls,” she said. “I give them food and shelter and pay the guys who sleep with them, but I let them go after they have given birth.”
She claims she can arrange court orders and is able to get children of all ages, genders and complexions, and at any time. The police, she said, are not a problem for her.
“What sex do you want?” she asked me. “A boy or a girl?”
“He just came to find out if what I told him about this business was true,” Eze told her. She then turned to me and said: “Now you know it’s real. Come back when you’re ready.”
I stood up and left, winding my way back to the waiting taxi, having glimpsed up close how the child trade mafia operates in Africa’s most populous country.
Every year, the Nigerian security operatives discover several new baby factories. Young girls are held captive to give birth to babies who are then sold illegally either to adoptive parents, into slavery, or, it is said, for traditional rituals. There are rumors and fears that newborns are being sold to witch doctors for rituals in a country where there is a widespread belief in traditional communities that a powder made of infants brings luck. But, such sensational claims notwithstanding, the vast majority of buyers almost certainly are married couples struggling to conceive.
A huge amount of the trade is carried out locally in Nigeria, but authorities suspect that babies also have been sold to people from Europe and the United States, and despite the controversy surrounding adoptions in Nigeria, many foreigners continue to seek infants here.
There are several reasons given for the high patronage of baby factories.
Security agencies say most places where the illegal baby trade occurs masquerade as non-governmental organizations or charitable homes for marginalized women. Operators of these places present themselves as humanitarians who take care of the pregnant teenagers in need.
Human trafficking, including selling children, is prohibited under Nigerian law (PDF), but almost 10 years ago a UNESCO report (PDF) on human trafficking in Nigeria identified the business as the country’s third-most common crime behind financial fraud and drug trafficking, and the situation certainly has not improved. At least 10 children are reportedly sold every day across the country.
The scourge has intensified in the southeast, which is populated mainly by the Igbo ethnic group. Security officials have several ongoing undercover operations targeting suspected baby trafficking rings in Enugu State, underscoring the severity of the problem in this region.
One measure taken by the government to check the proliferation of baby factories in the state has been to set up a committee on child adoption, and its research has suggested that the incidence of child trafficking and illegal adoptions has been on the rise because some security agencies and unscrupulous state officials aided the baby-sellers.
“They are now being sold like commodities and, as a responsible government, we cannot allow this to continue to exist in Enugu State,” Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, governor of Enugu, said while inaugurating the committee last month.
“While we acknowledge the right and the necessity for the childless or benevolent couples to adopt motherless children and orphans,” the governor declared, “we believe that there is need for strict compliance with due process and the provisions of relevant laws to guarantee the security and well being of the affected children.”
Eze and Madam Sarah, of course, have other ideas.
Philip Obaji Jr. is the founder of 1 GAME, an advocacy and campaigning organization that fights for the right to education for disadvantaged children in Nigeria, especially in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram forbids western education.  Follow him @PhilipObaji
Photo illustration by Celina Fang for The Daily Beast

Culled from The Daily Beast [myad]

The democratic experience in Nigeria has definitely been a continuing learning curve, and the more lessons we learn at various active centres: people, platforms and processes, the richer our democracy, the stronger the society evolves to deliver a brighter future for the sovereign. The greatest residue of our democracy in the last 16 years (1999–2015), I think, is the manner in which our community has been enriched by lessons that have practically changed our lives. The democratic deficit is less than the gain; for us, democracy is essentially liberative and should endure. It is partly the reason why no matter the observed shortcomings of the five-month old Buhari administration, the Nigerian people remain optimistic about their belief in the viability of the democratic option. They know that they have been empowered in such a manner that succeeding governments will always be held accountable to the electorate. Thus, democracy has reframed the national dialogue and the people’s expectations.
In 1999, with the return to civilian rule, the Nigerian people secured victory against a military establishment, which had exercised political authority, formally and informally, for about 33 years. They fought for six years to insist on democracy and the people’s right to choose. Sixteen years later, after many seasons of trial, we have reached a point in our romance with democracy, whereby no other form of government appeals to us. It is clear to every discerning person that only democratic rule is now acceptable to Nigerians. For it has shown us, how powerful we can possibly be. No other event has proven this to be true, more concretely than the last general elections. It should not be lost on Nigerians, the significance of the removal from office of an incumbent President.
In 2015, the power of the vote turned the Nigerian voter into the ultimate political authority, resulting in a greater sense of public ownership of the democratic enterprise. He or she knows that elected representatives can be held accountable through the ballot box. Democracy, building on the increased access to information and social interactions, has thus given Nigerians of voting age a voice and power that they never imagined possible. Military figures still show up and occupy high positions, but they do so only through the democratic process and it is only a matter of time before the myth of the military strong man being fit for public office will be completely exploded and laid to rest. In reality, the military’s political authority is diminished as old soldiers seek legitimation through the people. It is a great achievement for Nigeria.
Secondly, in 2005, an attempt was made to bypass the Nigerian Constitution and extend to a third term, the tenure of the then incumbent President. This alleged plan against the people was to have been hatched with the imprimatur of the national legislature, but again the people rose against the planned subterfuge. Pierre Nkurunziza may have succeeded in executing the same anti-people ploy in Burundi, and Paul Kagame may be toying with it in Rwanda, but it is not the kind of folly that anyone will ever try again in Nigeria and hope to succeed. The people have learnt that those in positions of power at the highest level may not be trusted to respect the laws of the land or the oath of office they took. Having stopped one former President from transforming into a monarch, the phrase – third term remains in our political lexicon, a reminder of what is constitutionally unacceptable. And for Nigerians, “stayism”, sit-tightism” or the Biya disease is definitely risqué. When people are elected to high office, they will not be allowed to change the rules of the game to suit their own purposes.
Third lesson: Nigerians have become very conscious of the implications of the health of their leaders for the stability of the polity. They were taught that lesson during the three-year rule of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. At the time, the key subject was the mortality of the President. From that point onwards, any sign that a potential President could be nursing a terminal disease became a major campaign issue. President Yar’Adua’s death threw up other sub-lessons about the supremacy of the Constitution and the right of other Nigerians to aspire to the highest office in the land, but the people would have preferred to have him healthily alive and not to have a Presidency dominated by morbidity and remembered, and excused, largely on that score. It is therefore not surprising that in the last elections, physical fitness and mortality became key issues of campaign.
Fourth lesson: that any Nigerian child regardless of the manner of extraction can aspire to the highest office in the land. With his emergence as Nigerian President in 2010, Goodluck Jonathan laid to rest the myth that to occupy that office, the candidate must be a person of privilege. His parents were ordinary folk. He was himself like the guy next door; his life a replica of the life of any struggling Nigerian of his age who had attended university, gone through national service, hustled for employment and was like the rest of us.
Hitherto, Nigerian leaders had elite connections or bearings and they wielded authority as if it was their birthright to do so. This claim to leadership birthright is now a subject of inquiry. It explains why in the last general elections, it became clear to all and sundry that there are now certain minimum standards being set nationwide in terms of personal attributes, experience and exposure with regard to public office. That is precisely the way our democracy has turned out: it has built confidence at all levels, and every Nigerian imagines himself to be a potential President. This is good, for as many people as imagine themselves to be national problem-solvers, the better for our community. However, President Jonathan was the first to prove the point that any citizen whoever he or she may be, can aspire to the highest office in the land and receive popular support.
Fifth lesson: when President Goodluck Jonathan conceded victory to President Buhari after the 2015 elections, he raised the moral bar of our democratic process. Nigerians have taken to heart the fact that the people have the power to change a sitting government at all levels and that the power of incumbency even at the centre is at the mercy of the electorate. These days, it is not unusual to find an average Nigerian of voting age holding an elected person accountable and swearing that any form of misconduct will be questioned. Good news!
What prevails in Nigeria today therefore is not merely voter confidence; it is best described as voter arrogance or voter dictatorship. In Ekiti, they voted out a well educated, cerebral Governor and replaced him with someone with a popular touch, and they have stubbornly defended their choice. In Abuja, they replaced a young Ph.D holder with a retired old man, called back to serve and “restore.” With the way the Nigerian voter has seized power in the public sphere, only his or her wishes can prevail. And so in the future, with the Jonathan example and experience, no incumbent can hold on to power once the people have spoken. The Nigerian voter is further empowered by digital revolution. He votes on election day with his card, but he votes everyday with his phone, with his access to internet platforms, and he speaks loud and clear, honestly or mischievously depending on his or her constitution. The Nigerian people can no longer be ignored. Positive development? Certainly. But all of what we describe has been made possible by the strengthening of the electoral institutions and processes. It is hoped that successive administrations will see the need to protect and preserve the integrity of electoral bodies, and thereby deepen emergent confidence in their capacity to deliver free, fair and credible elections.
Sixth lesson, and this is probably the most important. Nigerians have learnt after 16 years of democratic rule not to place implicit trust in politicians without asking for accountability. They know that professional politicians are capable of  lies, they deceive, they over-promise in order to secure their mandate, and also, that there are no true saints in power-ville. They are also learning that election campaign is different from governance, that governance is complex, politics is treacherous, and that politicians will say anything to win the votes and get into power. A corollary lesson: to resolve the cleavages that trouble Nigeria and render institutions ineffectual, government must be effective and our democracy must become more liberal and less of a mechanism for class formation and ethnic competition.
Five months of reverse ratiocination by the Buhari administration should make that clear even to the most naive. The people should also know that politicians have no differences on matters of self-interest; and they choose to exploit our many fault lines to achieve their objectives. They can be in this party today and move to the other party tomorrow – which we may see again in 2019. Nigerian politics is therefore not about ideology or principles; it is about power and who gets into the arena. But the people have also learnt one more thing: that change is possible, no matter the shape. And the power to effect change lies in their hands, for we have in 16 years managed to create a citizenry that is both deliberative and participative, whose notion of the state is that it must be affirmative, competent and constructive.  This is a major victory for Nigeria and for democracy. [myad]