Thread: Police raid Nigeria 'baby farm'

Police raid Nigeria 'baby farm'

Police have raided a private hospital in Nigeria where they suspect new-born babies were being sold to traffickers.

Police found the hospital in the south-eastern town of Enugu, when a 17-year-old girl escaped.

Four people - two nurses and the hospital's owners - have been arrested in connection with the "baby farm", police said.

Seven pregnant young women discovered in the hospital during the raid are now in the care of the state government.

Escape

State police commissioner Sani Magaji told the BBC Hausa service that a 17-year-old who was days away from giving birth had escaped from the hospital.

The women, according to the police, had spent up to six months in the hospital, waiting to give birth.

Their babies would be sold for as little as 15,000 naira ($127, £72), the police said.

It is suspected the babies were to be sold to traffickers who sell children into forced labour or prostitution.

The BBC's Abdussalam Ahmed in Enugu says several similar cases have been discovered in Nigeria in recent years.

Poor, unmarried women face tough choices if they get pregnant in Nigeria.

Unmarried mothers face exclusion from society, our correspondent says.

Abortion is illegal except in rare cases, and illegally obtained abortions are very dangerous.

In May, a Nigerian woman was jailed in the UK for trying to smuggle a baby into the country in order to get on the list for a council flat.
Police have not been able to trace the child's real parents.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Police raid Nigeria 'baby farm'

Woman jailed for smuggling baby
By June Kelly
Home affairs correspondent, BBC News

A Nigerian woman has been jailed for 26 months for bringing a child illegally into the UK.

Peace Sandberg, who was living in the UK, went to Nigeria and bought a baby to become eligible for a council flat, Isleworth Court Court heard.

She was convicted last month of bringing a child illegally into the UK.

She was reported to police after she initially told council staff she had given birth to the boy, then changed her story to say he was adopted.

Sandberg had a daughter who was living with her in council accommodation in the borough of Ealing in west London.

With dual nationality - Nigerian and Swedish - she knew that as a European citizen working in the UK she would be eligible for a council flat because she had a child.

But her daughter left the UK and moved to Sweden to live with her father, Sandberg's ex-husband.

With her daughter's departure Sandberg saw her hopes of a new home slipping away - which is when she hatched her plan to get a child.

Distraught appearance

At the end of 2006 she flew back to Nigeria.

She had already sent £150 which the police believe was payment for the baby boy.

She needed a visa to take him into the UK.

During the trial Andrea Charles, a visa officer at the British High Commission in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, described to the jury how a distraught Sandberg turned up with the baby.

There is a possibility this child will never know his true identity
Det Insp Gordon Valentine
Met police


She claimed she had given birth to him in Nigeria because she wanted him to qualify for a Nigerian passport.

Ms Charles said she had no reason to doubt her story and issued the visa.

When Sandberg arrived back at Heathrow airport she immediately went to the housing department.

Councillor Ian Green of Ealing Council says: "She told staff that the child was hers. But they had seen her only a few months before and knew that the child couldn't be hers as she wasn't pregnant at the time.

"She then changed her story and said she had adopted the child.
"Council officers were still not satisfied and alerted the police and the other authorities because they were of the opinion that she was using this child to gain council accommodation."

A criminal investigation was launched by the Metropolitan Police's Paladin Team, specialists in child trafficking.

Isolated case?

Det Insp Gordon Valentine, who heads Paladin, said: "This was clearly a case of trafficking.

"Peace Sandberg is a heartless woman. She brought the baby from his home environment for the purpose of her own ends without any regard for the future of that child."

Child protection campaigners believe this is not an isolated case.

Christine Beddoe, director of the children's charity ECPAT UK, said: "We get information brought to us about suspicions of child trafficking particularly for housing benefit fraud from social services and from children's organisations.
"They don't seem to be reported to the police. But we do believe it is much more widespread than people think."

Social services have been unable to find the child's real family in Nigeria.
He is now in foster care and looks set to be adopted and grow up in the UK.

Det Insp Valentine says: “There is a possibility this child will never know his true identity."

BBC NEWS | UK | Woman jailed for smuggling baby