BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chioma is adamant that Hope, the baby boy she is holding in her arms, is her son.\u202f After eight years of failed attempts to conceive, she sees him as her miracle baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m the owner of my baby,\u201d she says defiantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s sitting next to her husband, Ike, in the office of a Nigerian state official who spends the best part of an hour interrogating the couple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the commissioner for women affairs and social welfare in Anambra state, Ify Obinabo has plenty of experience in resolving family disputes – but this is no ordinary disagreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five members of Ike\u2019s family, who are also present in the room, do not believe Hope is the couple\u2019s biological child, as Chioma and Ike claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chioma claims to have \u201ccarried\u201d the child for about 15 months. The commissioner and Ike\u2019s family are in disbelief at the absurdity of the claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chioma says she faced pressure from Ike\u2019s family to conceive. They even asked him to marry another woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her desperation, she visited a \u201cclinic\u201d offering an unconventional \u201ctreatment\u201d – an outlandish and disturbing scam preying on women desperate to become mothers that involves the trafficking of babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BBC was allowed by authorities to sit in on the commissioner’s discussion with Chioma as part of our investigation into the cryptic pregnancy scam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have changed the names of Chioma, Ike and others in this article to protect them from reprisal in their communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC: Chioma is adamant that Hope, the baby boy she is holding in her arms, is her son.\u202f After eight years of failed attempts to conceive, she sees him as her miracle baby. \u201cI\u2019m the owner of my baby,\u201d she says defiantly. She\u2019s sitting next to her husband, Ike, in the office of a Nigerian state official who spends the best part of an hour interrogating the couple. As the commissioner for women affairs and social welfare in Anambra state, Ify Obinabo has plenty of experience in resolving family disputes – but this is no ordinary disagreement. Five members of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43323,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43321\/revisions\/43323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}