For 19 months, investigative journalist ‘FISAYO SOYOMBO studied, trailed, investigated and eventually penetrated a Christian orphanage that had been selling babies under the table. When he first received the tip-off in December 2021, one baby cost N1.5 million. Nineteen months later when he finally bought his, the ‘cost’ had jumped to N2 million, excluding a list of sundry pre-purchase expenses and covert requests for the greasing of palms.
This investigation exposes not only how a popular Lagos-headquartered orphanage home was attracting donors with its religious tenets, longstanding existence, media mileage and strategic positioning in Nigeria’s commercial capital before diverting them to the South-East for backdoor cash-for-baby transactions, it also reveals how the sales were executed with the collusion of the police and the judiciary.
