-Why they’re springing up in Southeast, by Red Cross

Anambra State Government on Monday ordered all motherless babies’ homes that could be tagged ‘baby factories’ to pack and leave the state within 48 hours or risk a clampdown.

Wife of the Anambra State Governor Mrs. Margaret Peter Obi stated this at the 2013 Children’s Day event at the Alex Ekwueme Square in Awka.

She warned motherless babies’ homes in the state and those indulging in any form of illegal adoption of babies and outright selling of babies in any disguise to pack and leave without further delay.

Sale of babies in ‘Baby factories’ has become rampant in the Southeast in recent times.

Security agents have smashed syndicates that were involved in keeping teenage girls in homes where they are made pregnant and their babies collected from them after paying them off. The babies are normally sold for a fee.

Mrs. Obi said she is sure of the reduction of such ‘baby factories’ in Anambra State because Governor Peter Obi last year mandated the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development to ensure that all homes in the state which were not registered were closed.

She said the state government had ordered the ban of all illegal homes and working hand in gloves with the National Agency for The Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters, NAPTIP on issues relating to children.

‘Baby factory is an injustice against children arid against moral values our society is known for. Our laws on baby fostering and adoption are sacrosanct and must be complied by anybody setting up a Motherless Babies Home. Once that is not done, the home is illegal and we have ordered all illegal homes and operators to leave the state within 48 hours.

”It is illegal and that is why our government has taken issues relating to children seriously including Education, mother and child mortality and health care services.”

Secretary to the Anambra State Government (SSG), Mr. Osaeloka Obaze, who took the salute on behalf of Obi read the address of Mr. President to the Nigerian children.

In a related development the South-east zonal chairman of the Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS), Dr. Peter Emeka Katchy attributed the springing up of illegal motherless babies homes to a new life style of the people which is alien to the Southeast cultural values.

Katchy, an Associate Professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, said those alien cultural values are gradually taking over the customs and traditions, which resulted in moral debasement and latitude in sexual behaviour of young girls.

He said Christianity never- encouraged baby trafficking or’ surrogate motherhood, neither did it encourage one to sell baby for money, adding, “Infact, Christianity forbids a Christian from contracting a poor young girl to become pregnant and deliver the baby to an infertile man or a barren woman who might have misused herself at a young age”.

He also attributed the vogue for adoption of babies as a solution to infertility and assuaging the feeling of barrenness of infertile women and impotency.

He blamed the modern society for our pretences to pseudo class syndrome of modern class of adoption that is alien to Igbo culture and tradition, which is a new generation of slave trade.

Katchy contended that abject poverty has created opportunity for this new vogue to thrive by young girls becoming pregnant as surrogate mothers only for their babies to be sold on delivery by available modern trained infertile mother, encourage baby trafficking and slave trade in pretence to modernity, whereas it is an aberration in Igbo culture which has made the people of Southeast lose their value.

Comments

comments