A Canada-based Nigerian woman, LifewithSjay, has recounted how her desperate search for a child exposed her to what she described as a ‘very dark world’ in Nigeria, where women struggling with childlessness can become vulnerable to exploitation.
In a video posted on her Instagram page, she detailed some of the encounters she had while searching for a child.
‘I wanted a child so badly that I accidentally discovered a world, a very dark world in Nigeria,’ she said.
‘When women are desperate to have babies, there are people who are willing to take advantage of that. I know this because I was one of those desperate women.’
According to her, her childlessness was no secret, as people around her knew she had been married for years without children.
‘Everybody knew I’ve been married for a long time without children. Everybody knew that I wanted children,’ she said.
‘And so everybody came to me with solution.’
She said people constantly referred her to pastors, places and individuals who supposedly had solutions for women struggling to conceive.
At one point, she contacted a pastor in Abuja after someone she knew told her he had helped another woman have a baby.
She said the pastor told her that the reason she had no children was a ‘marine spirit’ and instructed her to undergo dry fasting.
He allegedly also instructed her to find a sleeping snail at the market, rub it over her body and go outside naked at midnight to pray.
‘And I thought, ‘What kind of prayer is this? What kind of pastor is this?” she recalled.
However, after speaking to the woman who referred her, she said she was encouraged to follow the instructions.
‘She said, ‘Women have gone to that man’s altar and they have naked themselves on the altar to pray! So what are you saying?”
Eventually, she said, ‘the next day I went to the market to look for the snail that was sleeping.’
After buying the snail, she followed the pastor’s instructions.
‘At midnight, I opened the snail and I rubbed the whole thing around my body, and I took the bowl of water, and I went outside naked to go and pray.’
But the experience left her questioning what she had done.
‘When I came back inside, I felt so stupid, and I thought, ‘What kind of stupid nonsense is this?’ So I stopped after that day.’
She said her interactions with other women searching for children exposed her to even more disturbing stories.
‘There was one particular woman that told me how a pastor told her to come to his church and do the fasting. After the fasting, she will be stark naked, then he will bathe her before she can have a child.’
Reflecting on the vulnerability of women desperate to become mothers, she said, ‘Desperation is a very dangerous place to be.’
‘People know exactly how vulnerable you are, and they can use that vulnerability against you because they know exactly what to tell you to get you to do what they want you to do, or sometimes exploit you for money.’
She said prolonged childlessness could also lead to social isolation, making the desperation even more intense.
‘Just imagine looking for a child for years, you’ve watched other women get their children, and you are there 10 years, 12 years has passed, you’ve not gotten your own kid.’
‘Somehow society has excluded you from life because they no longer invite you for birthday parties, because Nigeria can be very cruel to women who are looking for children.’
She also recalled being told about an alleged arrangement in Port Harcourt where a woman could pay N4 million to obtain a newborn.
According to her, the prospective adopter would go to a hospital on a particular day, remain in another room and receive the baby immediately after birth, without meeting the biological mother.
When she asked whether there would be legal documentation, she said she was told:
‘No, no document o! Just carry the child and just leave, and leave Port Harcourt immediately!’
‘I questioned myself like, ‘What is that?” she recalled.
She later attempted to pursue a more formal adoption process before relocating to Canada.
She said she was told she would receive documentation from the relevant authorities and would pay N70,000 for the documents and N1.2 million to obtain the baby quickly.
She selected a baby girl from photographs sent to her and became excited about finally becoming a mother.
‘I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to get a baby!”
However, she said repeated requests for the adoption documents were met with excuses.
She also became suspicious when she was told the baby would travel from Kaduna to Port Harcourt, where she would collect her.
‘They said, ‘Oh, she will go from Kaduna to Port Harcourt, and then you will go to Port Harcourt to pick her because we don’t want the people who are bringing her to know that you live in Calabar.”
‘Hmm? Question mark!’ she recalled.
She said she initially tried to convince herself that she might simply be overthinking the situation.
But when she continued insisting on seeing the adoption papers, she said someone eventually revealed information that made her withdraw from the arrangement.
Looking back, she said people outside the experience may struggle to understand why desperate women accept questionable claims and practices.
‘When people who are standing outside that desperation start to ask, ‘But why would she think that that is true?”
‘Wait until you stand inside that desperation, then you will know exactly how that woman feels.’