Last summer, when “Susan” landed at Gatwick Airport from Nigeria with a newborn baby in her arms, she expected to return quietly to her family life in West Yorkshire. Instead, she was arrested on suspicion of child trafficking. Now, her name sits at the heart of a disturbing Family Court case that has exposed one of Nigeria’s most insidious exports: baby farming.
According to BBC, Susan, whose real name has been withheld to protect the child at the center of the case had been living in the UK since June 2023 with her husband and other children. She worked as a care worker and had legal residency. Before leaving for Nigeria, Susan told her GP she was pregnant. There were no signs of pregnancy, and blood tests revealed a tumor and not a baby. Despite doctors’ concerns, she refused further treatment and clung to an unlikely story: her pregnancies had always been undetectable, and this one was no different.
In June 2024, she left the UK, claiming she wanted to deliver the baby in Nigeria. Weeks later, she returned with an infant girl, “Eleanor.” But the narrative she spun quickly fell apart.
When DNA tests showed no biological link between the baby and either Susan or her husband, her explanation pivoted: it was an IVF baby, she claimed, that is conceived with donor egg and sperm. To prove her story, she submitted shaky documentation: a forged IVF record and a suspicious birth certificate from a Nigerian hospital. The accompanying photos, taken in what appeared to be a delivery suite, were blurry and inconclusive.
The woman in them was faceless. One photo featured a naked woman with a placenta between her legs. “Someone had given birth,” said the Nigerian doctor who signed the document. “It just wasn’t Susan.”
That doctor would later admit that impersonation is common. According to social worker and child protection expert Henrietta Coker, who investigated the case for the Family Court in Leeds, the scenario is symptomatic of a wider child trafficking ecosystem in Nigeria. Her work in both the UK and Nigeria has revealed how some women, desperate to appear fertile or expand their families, turn to illicit baby farms where newborns are purchased and smuggled out under false pretenses.
Coker’s investigation took her deep into Lagos’s unregulated fertility underworld. She visited the supposed IVF clinic listed in Susan’s documents—there was no record of her there, and the clinic’s management said the documents were faked. The “hospital” where Susan allegedly gave birth was, in reality, a dingy three-bedroom apartment with peeling walls, dirty carpets, and teenage girls dressed as nurses.
It was, Coker told the court, a classic baby factory. “Sometimes these girls are kidnapped, raped, and made to give birth repeatedly,” she testified. “Other times, they die in labour or are murdered.”
While Susan’s case is disturbing on its own, it is also emblematic of a broader, darker trade that sees babies bought, sold, and smuggled into countries like the UK under elaborate ruses. According to the Nigerian government, over 200 baby factories have been shut down in the last five years. Yet, experts believe many continue to operate in secrecy, with forged documents and complicit healthcare workers keeping the trade alive.
The UK Family Court ultimately ruled that Susan and her husband had staged a false birth narrative and caused significant psychological harm to baby Eleanor. The court ordered that the child be placed for adoption, stripping the couple of any parental rights and declaring a “non-parentage” status.
But how does someone like Susan, a seemingly ordinary mother, carew orker, and legal UK resident become entangled in such a grim system?
Friends and acquaintances described Susan as quietly ambitious and deeply religious. Her employer said she often talked about motherhood as her divine calling. She was also reportedly under pressure within her community for having “completed her family” in a non-traditional way. In certain Nigerian diaspora circles, infertility or childlessness—whether real or perceived—carries a significant stigma. That stigma fuels demand for alternative, sometimes illegal, routes to parenthood.
“Fertility is a deeply emotional, often spiritual issue in Nigeria,” Dr. Ifeoma Onyekwe, a sociologist who has studied reproductive pressure in West African communities told BBC. “For some, having children is tied to social status, inheritance rights, even survival. In the absence of regulated access to fertility treatments, people turn to black market options.”
Investigators found messages on Susan’s phone from a contact listed as “Mum Oft Lagos Baby,” referencing hospital bills and “delivery drugs.” The court interpreted this as a digital paper trail. One message read: “Hospital bill 170k. Delivery drug 3.4m.” In today’s exchange rate, that’s roughly ₦3.5 million.
Still, Susan never wavered in her story, even after being confronted with DNA evidence and forged hospital records. Her husband, too, insisted Eleanor was “a fundamental part of their family unit.”
In the end, the court didn’t buy it.
“Susan and her husband attempted to deceive the court and the state,” said Judge William Tyler KC. “They staged an elaborate lie and caused emotional harm to the child in their care.”
For now, baby Eleanor lives with a foster family. When adopted, she will receive British nationality and a new identity. Her real parentage remains unknown.
Meanwhile, Susan’s story is a warning. It shows how desperation, community pressure, and a thriving black market for babies can converge even in the lives of ordinary people. It also raises difficult questions about how such children are moved across borders, how fake documentation passes through immigration systems, and what global coordination is needed to tackle a trade that endangers the lives and futures of some of the world’s most vulnerable.
As . Coker noted: “The real issue doesn’t start in the courtroom. It starts in places where babies are made commodities.”
