Chioma is convinced that Hope, the baby she is holding, is her son. After eight years of failed attempts to conceive, she sees him as her miracle child.
“I own my baby,” she says defiantly.
She is sitting next to her husband, Ike, in the office of a Nigerian state official who has been interrogating the couple for the better part of an hour.
As Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Welfare in Anambra State, Ify Obinabo has a lot of experience in resolving family disputes, but this is not a common disagreement.
Five other members of Ike’s family, who are also present in the room, do not believe that Hope is the couple’s biological child, as Chioma and Ike claim.
Chioma says she “carried the child in her womb” for about 15 months. The commissioner and Ike’s family cannot believe the absurdity of the statement.
Chioma says Ike’s family pressured her to conceive. They even asked him to marry another woman.
In desperation, she visited a “clinic” that offered an unconventional “treatment”: a bizarre and disturbing scam that preys on women desperate to become mothers and involves baby trafficking.
The authorities allowed the BBC to attend the commissioner’s conversation with Chioma as part of our investigation into the cryptic pregnancy scam.
The names of Chioma, Ike and others in this article have been changed to protect them from retaliation in their communities.
A long scam
Nigeria has one of the highest birth rates in the world, and women often face social pressure to conceive and even ostracism or abuse if they are unable to do so.
Under this pressure, some women go to extremes to realize their dream of becoming mothers.
For more than a year, BBC Africa Eye has been investigating the “cryptic pregnancy” scam.
Scammers pose as doctors or nurses and convince women they have a “miracle fertility treatment” that guarantees they will get pregnant..
The initial “treatment” typically costs hundreds of dollars and involves an injection, drink, or substance inserted into the vagina.
None of the women or officials we spoke to during our investigation know for sure what these drugs contain, but some women have told us that they caused changes to their bodies, such as bloating in the stomach, which further convinced them that they were pregnant
Women receiving the “treatment” are warned not to visit any conventional doctor or hospital, as no ultrasound or pregnancy test would detect “the baby,” which scammers claim is growing outside the womb.
When it is time to “give birth,” women are told that labor will begin only once they are induced with a “rare and expensive drug.”which requires additional payment.
Accounts of how “birth” happens vary, but all are disturbing.
Some were sedated and woke up with an incision mark similar to that of a cesarean section. Others say they were given an injection that caused a state of drowsiness and hallucinations in which they believed they were giving birth.
Either way, women end up with babies they were supposed to have given birth to.
Chioma tells Commissioner Obinabo that when it was her time to “give birth”, the so-called doctor injected her in her waist and told her to push.
He doesn’t explain how he ended up with Hope, but says the birth was “painful.”
Our team managed to infiltrate one of these secret “clinics” by posing as a couple who has been trying to conceive for eight years and contacted a woman known as “Dr Ruth” among her clients.
This so-called “Doctor Ruth” runs her clinic every second Saturday of the month in a run-down hotel in the town of Ihiala, Anambra State, in the southeast of the country.
Outside her office, dozens of women wait for her in the hotel hallways, some with visibly bulging stomachs..
The whole atmosphere brims with positivism. At one point, huge celebrations break out in the room after a woman is told she is pregnant.
When it is the turn of our undercover journalists to see her, “Dr. Ruth” tells them that the effectiveness of the treatment is guaranteed.
He offers the woman an injection, stating that it will allow the couple to “select” the sex of their future baby, something medically impossible.
After they refuse the injection, “Doctor Ruth” gives them a bag of crushed pills and a few more pills to take at home, along with instructions on when to have sex.
This initial treatment costs 350,000 naira (US$205).
Our undercover reporter did not take the medications or follow any of “Dr. Ruth’s” instructions and saw her again four weeks later.
After passing a device that looks like an ultrasound scanner over our reporter’s stomach, a sound like a heartbeat is heard and “Dr. Ruth” congratulates her on being pregnant.
They both applaud with joy.
After giving the good news, “Doctor Ruth” explains that they will have to pay for a “scarce” and expensive medicine necessary for the baby to be born, which costs between 1.5 and two million naira (US$1,180).
Without this medicine, the pregnancy could last more than nine months, says “Dr. Ruth” without taking into account the scientific facts, and adds: “The baby will become malnourished; “We will have to feed it again.”
“Dr Ruth” has not responded to the BBC’s inquiries against her.
It is unclear to what extent the women involved actually believe the claims.
But clues as to why they would be susceptible to such blatant lies can be found, in part, in online groups where misinformation about pregnancy is widespread.
A network of misinformation
Cryptic pregnancy is a recognized medical phenomenon, in which the woman is not aware of her pregnancy until the late stages.
But during our investigation, The BBC found widespread misinformation on Facebook groups and pages about this type of pregnancy.
A woman from the United States, who dedicates her entire page to her “cryptic pregnancy,” claims to have been pregnant “for years” and that her journey cannot be explained by science.
In closed Facebook groups, many posts use religious terminology to hail the bogus “treatment” as a “miracle” for those who have failed to conceive.
All of this misinformation helps cement women’s belief in the scam.
Members of these groups are not only from Nigeria, but also from South Africa, the Caribbean and the USA.
Scammers sometimes also manage and post in these groups, allowing them to communicate with women who express interest in the “treatment.”
Once someone expresses their willingness to start the scam process, they are invited to safer WhatsApp groups.
There, administrators share information about “cryptic clinics” and what the process entails.
“I’m still confused.”
The authorities tell us that, to complete the “treatment”, Scammers need newborn babies and to do so they look for desperate and vulnerable women, many of them young and pregnant, in a country where abortion is illegal..
In February 2024, the Anambra State Ministry of Health raided the facility where Chioma “gave birth” to 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 held against their will. Some were as young as 17 years old.
Several of them tell us that they were tricked into going there, not knowing that their babies would be sold to the scammer’s clients.
Others, like Uju – which is not her real name – were too afraid to tell their family that they were pregnant and looked for a way out.
Uju says she was offered 800,000 naira (US$470) for the baby.
When asked if she regrets her decision to sell her baby, she says, “I’m still confused.”
Commissioner Obinabo, who has been involved in her state’s efforts to crack down on this scheme, says scammers prey on vulnerable women like Uju to get the babies.
At the end of a tense interrogation, Commissioner Obinabo threatens to take baby Hope away from Chioma.
But Chioma pleads her case and the commissioner finally accepts her explanation that she herself is a victim and that she had not realized what was happening.
On this basis, he allows Chioma and Ike to keep the baby, unless the birth parents come forward to claim him.
But unless attitudes toward women, infertility, reproductive rights and adoption change, scams like this will continue to thrive, experts warn.
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