On Thursday, July 30, 2026, Naija Feminists Media (NFM) hosted an X Space titled “Human Trafficking: Examining the Consequences of Surrogacy on Vulnerable Nigerian Women and Children,” which brought together legal and medical experts to interrogate surrogacy in Nigeria and its intersection with human trafficking.
Simbiat Bakare, investigative journalist and Founder of NFM, opened the discussion by arguing that Nigeria’s push to regulate surrogacy exposes a contradiction at the heart of its reproductive rights framework.
“If you are saying that women should have the reproductive empowerment to be able to get pregnant, they must also have the reproductive empowerment to abort babies,” she said, noting that surrogacy contracts typically bar surrogates from choosing abortion.
She argued that Nigeria cannot regulate surrogacy while abortion remains prohibited, and that the Palermo Protocol’s stance against the sale of children and its recognition that financial pressure invalidates consent conflicts directly with proposals to regulate paid surrogacy.
She called for a worldwide prohibition on the practice instead, with enforcement resources redirected toward prosecuting violators.
Deborah Ekone, a lawyer, raised the arguments Simbiat Bakare was building on, including the case for legal practitioners to advocate regulation rather than prohibition and the abortion-rights inconsistency in surrogacy law.
Omosanyin Evelyn Ololade, a lecturer, brought a media and gender lens to the conversation, arguing that Nigerian coverage of surrogacy focuses on payment and the surrogate’s welfare during pregnancy while ignoring what happens to her afterwards, including postpartum depression.
“We should move beyond the sensational questions of whether surrogacy is good or bad, and ask more important questions like how do we ensure that reproductive assistance does not become a pathway for the exploitation of women and children,” she said, calling for more investigative reporting centred on surrogates themselves rather than intending parents.
Dr Nkechi Asogwa, the director of Doctors Health Initiative, stated that the bioethical principle of beneficence describes the physiological bond formed between a birth mother and infant during pregnancy and cites research on fetal-maternal microchimerism.
“No matter how we sugarcoat it, surrogacy is an exploitative practice, and it ought to be abolished,” she said, arguing that existing alternatives, including NaProTechnology and adoption, already address infertility without commodifying reproduction.
