By Celestine Okafor (Editor-in-chief)
There is a quiet crisis developing behind the doors of many Nigerian homes. It begins, sometimes, with years of childlessness.
A married couple waits and family members pray. Relatives ask uncomfortable questions and society applies pressure. The woman is often blamed, while the man’s fertility may escape scrutiny. Eventually, after years of disappointment, the couple decides to adopt a child.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that decision. Indeed, lawful adoption can give an abandoned, orphaned or vulnerable child something every child deserves which is a safe home, responsible parents, education, affection and a future.
But what happens when the desire to have a child becomes so desperate that prospective parents bypass the law?
What happens when babies are obtained through private arrangements, maternity homes, unregistered orphanages, religious intermediaries, traditional networks or individuals who promise a “newborn baby” for money?
And what happens when the child grows up believing that the people raising him or her are the biological parents, without ever knowing the truth about his or her origins?
These questions are becoming increasingly important in Nigeria, where authorities have continued to uncover cases in which children are allegedly moved, sold or passed off for adoption through criminal networks.
The danger is no longer merely about whether a child has been transferred from one family to another. It is about identity, ancestry, medical history, inheritance, marriage, psychological wellbeing and the preservation of family histories across generations.
Adoption is not the same thing as buying a child. The first distinction Nigeria must make is between legal adoption and illegal acquisition of a child. Under Nigeria’s Child Rights Act, adoption is a judicial and welfare process, not a private commercial transaction.
The law requires appropriate consent or circumstances such as abandonment, neglect or abuse before an adoption order can be made. It also requires that prospective adopters be assessed for suitability and that the court consider the welfare and best interests of the child.
The law further provides safeguards against financial inducement. Before an adoption order is made, the court must satisfy itself that no prohibited payment or reward has been given or agreed in consideration of the adoption, apart from what the court may approve.
Therefore, a desperate couple paying an intermediary for a baby is not necessarily “adopting” in the legal sense. They may be participating in an illegal child-transfer arrangement. And if the child was stolen, abducted, fraudulently obtained, or procured from a vulnerable mother, the matter can move beyond adoption into the territory of child trafficking.
There is a frightening growth of the "baby market” in Nigeria which the country has repeatedly confronted the phenomenon popularly known as the baby factory.
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, has documented forms of trafficking involving orphanages and maternity homes, including cases in which children are obtained from vulnerable families and presented as orphans for financial gain. Its handbook also describes “cryptic pregnancies,” fake maternity homes and baby factories in which women and girls may be exploited to produce babies for sale.
Recent cases show that the problem is not merely historical. In 2025, police operations in Enugu and Anambra states uncovered alleged trafficking and baby-factory networks involving children, pregnant women and alleged illegal adoption schemes. In 2026, NAPTIP also announced the discovery of a suspected trafficking network in Enugu in which children were allegedly sold under the guise of care arrangements.
Even more disturbing was a recent investigation involving children allegedly taken from communities affected by conflict in Benue State. According to NAPTIP's investigation as reported by Premium Times, children were transported to orphanages and subsequently distributed to prospective adopters; some alleged transactions involved millions of naira.
These cases expose a dangerous intersection between childlessness, poverty, desperation, weak regulation and organised criminality. The prospective parents may believe they are rescuing a child. The criminal intermediary may know that the child has been stolen. The biological parents may believe their child has merely been taken temporarily for education or welfare.
And the child may grow up in a completely different family, carrying a false identity.
That is where the real tragedy begins.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE FAMILY BLOODLINE?
The expression “family bloodline” carries enormous emotional and cultural significance in Nigeria. Across many communities, genealogy is not merely a matter of biology. It is connected to names, ancestry, inheritance, traditional titles, clan membership, land, family obligations and knowledge of one's origins. A legally adopted child becomes a member of the adoptive family in law, subject to the applicable adoption law. But adoption does not alter biological ancestry. The biological history remains.
That distinction becomes critically important when adoption is conducted secretly or illegally. Imagine a child taken from a family in another state and raised in Abuja, Lagos, Enugu or Port Harcourt under another surname. Twenty or thirty years later, that child marries, has children and becomes part of another extended family. The biological family may never know what happened. The adopted person may never know where he or she came from. The two family histories have effectively been severed.
One of the most disturbing long-term risks is the possibility of unknowing biological relationships between people who believe they are unrelated. In a large country such as Nigeria, where families may be spread across several states and where informal identity records remain common, a person whose biological origin has been deliberately concealed may have no reliable way of knowing his or her ancestry. The problem becomes more serious when the child's biological records are falsified or destroyed.
A young man could unknowingly develop a relationship with a biological relative. And a young woman could marry into a family to which she is biologically connected. Their children could subsequently be born without the parents ever knowing the genetic relationship. This is not an argument against adoption, rather an argument for truthful records, secure identity systems and responsible disclosure of origins.
The genetic and medical history of the adopted is another ticking time bomb. This is another dimension that Nigerians sometimes overlook. Doctors routinely ask patients about family history of illnesses.
Questions like, is there a history of sickle-cell disease, diabetes, hypertension, certain cancers, inherited blood disorders, mental-health conditions or rare genetic diseases?
A person who does not know his biological parents may be unable to answer such questions.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has repeatedly emphasised that birth registration is fundamental to establishing legal identity and protecting children from exploitation and other rights violations. Nigeria's civil-registration framework requires birth registration, while UNICEF's current country data indicate that only about 40 per cent of Nigerian children under five have their births registered. That is an enormous identity gap.
If birth registration itself remains incomplete, the challenge becomes even greater when children are transferred through informal adoption arrangements. The child may eventually asks: “Who am I?” Perhaps the deepest wound is psychological. A child may grow up happily with adoptive parents and have no reason to question the circumstances of birth. But adolescence often brings questions about identity. Questions such as why do I look different from my parents? Where did my surname come from? Who really are my biological parents? Why was I adopted? Was I abandoned? Was I unwanted? Was I bought or stolen?
The answers can determine how the individual understands himself or herself. The child often develops almost incurable personality complex. A child who discovers at adulthood that the people he or she called “Mummy” and “Daddy” concealed the truth of his birth may experience anger, betrayal, confusion and a profound identity crisis.
This is why adoption experts generally emphasise that children should, where appropriate and safe, have access to truthful information about their origins.
UNICEF's position on adoption is fundamentally child-centred. Where children cannot safely remain with their biological families, stable family-based care should be pursued, but adoption must be transparent, ethical and free from exploitation, coercion, abduction and improper financial gain.
The biological family can also become a victim. The discussion should not focus only on the adoptive family. There are biological parents who lose children through deception.
A poor mother may be told that her baby will be taken temporarily for medical treatment.
A vulnerable family may be promised education for a child. A displaced parent may entrust a child to an organisation believing that the organisation will provide care. Then, the child disappears. The parent searches and the years pass. In some cases, the child has already been moved hundreds of kilometres away.
Recent NAPTIP investigations report available to Nigerian NewsLeader Newspaper however illustrate precisely how vulnerable communities can be targeted by people presenting themselves as child-rights workers or representatives of charitable organisations. That is not adoption but exploitation.
Adopted children often face severe inheritance problem. Nigeria's complex customary and statutory inheritance systems make identity particularly important as a basis for family inheritance entitlement. Questions like who is entitled to inherit family property often pops up? Who belongs to a particular lineage? Who can establish descent from a family ancestor? Who is entitled to family land or a traditional position?
A legitimate adoption order may provide legal rights within an adoptive family, depending on the governing law. But an illegally transferred child can generate a future legal nightmare. Suppose a child who was secretly obtained from another family becomes a wealthy adult. The biological family later discovers the child's identity.
Or suppose the child dies intestate. Which family knows about the biological relationship? Which records establish the truth? Could competing claims arise over property, family identity or inheritance?
These are questions that may not appear important when a baby is an infant, a toddler, a child, until teenage age, young adult age, adult age or middle-aged. Probably thirty years later, they could become matters for lawyers and courts. Nigeria's weak identity system makes the danger worse. The problem is amplified by the country's weaknesses in civil registration.
UNICEF's 2026 statistical profile of birth registration in Nigeria draws on the 2023–2024 Demographic and Health Survey and notes the importance of improving birth registration and certification. A functioning identity system should make it difficult to erase a child's history.
As a matter of necessity, every child should have a secure record of birth, parentage where legally appropriate, adoption status and subsequent legal changes to identity. The record should be protected against manipulation but accessible under clearly defined safeguards when the individual reaches an appropriate age or when serious medical, legal or welfare reasons arise.
The government has an official responsibility to close the loopholes. Nigeria has begun acknowledging the need to tighten adoption procedures. In February 2024, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs said it intended to strengthen adoption procedures because children were allegedly being subjected to abuse and molestation under the guise of adoption. The ministry also proposed stronger verification measures.
More recently, the Federal Government convened stakeholders in June 2026 to review child-protection and family-welfare frameworks, including guidelines for the re-certification of child-adoption services. Those efforts need to go much further.
Nigeria needs a nationally coordinated, digitally connected child-adoption registry linking state ministries responsible for children, family courts, NAPTIP, the National Population Commission, the police and other authorised institutions.
Every legitimate adoption should leave a secure administrative and judicial trail. And
every registered orphanage centre should be regularly inspected. Every child in institutional care should have a traceable identity, and every prospective adopter should undergo rigorous background checks.
In the same vain, every claimed biological parent should be properly identified before a child is released for adoption, except in legally recognised circumstances such as genuine abandonment where the law provides otherwise.
Prospective adoptive parents must understand that the answer to their unfortunate situation cannot be to purchase a child. Childless couples deserve compassion. The pain of infertility should never be trivialised. But no prospective parent should accept the statements like: “Do not ask questions; just take the baby.”
That is a warning sign.
Likewise, prospective adopters should be suspicious of anyone who promises a baby quickly for a large payment or refuses to disclose the child's biological circumstances or discourages contact with government authorities or says that court processes are unnecessary. A couple that genuinely wants to give a child a home should insist on doing it legally. That protects the child and the adoptive parents. It protects the biological family. And ultimately, protects the integrity of Nigeria's society.
The central principle must remain simple.
Adoption exists for the welfare of children—not to satisfy the emotional demands of adults. Childlessness can be heartbreaking, but a child's vulnerability must never become the solution to another person's pain. Nigeria must therefore reject two dangerous extremes. The first is the cultural stigma that treats childless couples as incomplete families and pushes them into desperation.
The second is the criminal exploitation of that desperation by baby factories, traffickers, corrupt intermediaries and unregulated institutions.
The answer lies in compassionate fertility support, responsible adoption, stronger child protection and an identity system that follows every child. There is nothing inherently destructive about adoption.
Indeed, for some children, adoption can be the difference between a life of abandonment and a life of opportunity. The real danger is secret, fraudulent, commercial or trafficking-based adoption.
Nigeria must therefore protect both sides of the child's story: the child's right to a loving family and the child's right to know, as far as safely and legally possible, where he or she came from. The family that raises the child should not have to fear the truth. The biological family should not have its child stolen from its history. And the child should not reach adulthood carrying a manufactured identity.
If Nigeria fails to act, today's seemingly isolated illegal child transfers could become tomorrow's inheritance disputes, medical mysteries, identity crises and painful discoveries of biological relationships between people who never knew they were related. That is why the country must treat adoption not simply as a private family matter, but as a national child-protection, identity and justice issue.
The ultimate test of Nigeria's adoption system should be neither the satisfaction of the adults nor the number of children placed with families. It should be much more fundamental. Did the process protect the child, preserve the truth of the child's identity, respect the rights of the biological family, and give the child a safe and genuinely permanent home? If the answer is no, then what has taken place may not be adoption at all.It may simply be the legal-looking face of child trafficking.
The legal position varies somewhat because adoption is implemented through state laws and courts; Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) currently says 24 of the 36 states have adopted the Child Rights Act as state law, so any specific adoption case should be checked against the applicable state legislation and court procedure. NNL.
