Julie Okah-Donli, former Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), has alleged that some women in Nigeria use steroids to simulate pregnancy before obtaining babies through illegal means to deceive their husbands into believing they gave birth.
Julie Okah-Donli, Former Director-General of NAPTIP
Okah-Donli made the claims during an interview on the Kaa Truths Podcast, a clip of which resurfaced on Tuesday, July 14, where she discussed alleged fake pregnancy syndicates and baby trafficking in the country.
According to her, women involved in the practice are allegedly injected with steroids that produce physical changes resembling pregnancy.
“They are injected with steroids. So when they inject them with these steroids, it gives them the semblance of a pregnant woman. Their faces are bloated up, and their tummies are actually very big. They look pregnant, but they are not pregnant,” she said.
She further alleged that the women imitate pregnancy symptoms, particularly when their husbands are present.
“When their husbands are around, they pretend to be suffering from morning sickness. They spit, they pretend to throw up and all sorts of funny things,” she claimed.
Okah-Donli also alleged that babies are often presented to the husbands after arrangements have been made to ensure they are absent during the supposed delivery.
“When it’s time to have the baby, they usually have the baby when the man has travelled. Then he comes back to see a baby in the house. But sometimes if it’s the kind of man that doesn’t travel, they ask him to go and buy something… By the time the man comes back, it’s ‘Congratulations, you have a baby,'” she alleged.
The former NAPTIP boss further claimed that some women undergo surgical procedures designed to resemble a caesarean section to reinforce the deception.
“They actually do open them up to make it look like they had a CS. That’s how desperate these guys are. They stitch them back up,” she alleged.
Speaking on paternity disputes, Okah-Donli argued that maternity tests should also be conducted whenever paternity tests show that a child is not biologically related to the presumed father.
“We started finding out that during a paternity test, a lot of children were not the children of the man. But one thing they failed to do was maternity test, which would have confirmed that the women did not have the children,” she said.
She maintained that maternity tests could help investigators uncover cases of alleged baby trafficking.
“The man is thinking this woman cheated on me, whereas the woman bought the baby. So it’s not even the mother. You can have the maternity test to be sure that this woman is not the mother of the baby, and then you begin to investigate where the baby came from,” she said.
Okah-Donli also alleged that some women falsely claim to have given birth to multiple babies because it makes the deception easier.
“Most of them say they have twins. They have triplets. They have quadruplets. Now everybody seems to be having twins and triplets and quadruplets because it’s easier for them to just buy them once and for all and deceive themselves and the world,” she added.
While the former NAPTIP Director-General made the allegations based on her experience combating human trafficking, she did not present specific evidence during the interview to substantiate the claims. Medical experts note that while certain steroids can cause weight gain, fluid retention and other bodily changes, they do not induce an actual pregnancy. Cases of baby trafficking and illegal adoption have, however, been uncovered and prosecuted in Nigeria over the years by law enforcement agencies.
