Nigerian couples cautiously turn to surrogacy to ease fertility woes

LAGOS: Ada became a surrogate mother after her landlord threatened to evict her family from their apartment in Nigeria´s commercial capital, Lagos, two years ago. But her husband wasn´t open to the idea when she first brought it up. "He was like, ´What´s that? Why on earth would you think of something like that? Please don´t even go there´," she recalled. Ada became intrigued about surrogacy when she heard about it on a US reality television show, but thought it was only for Westerners.

Then a colleague revealed that she had done it. But in a religiously conservative nation, many Christians and Muslims alike are sceptical of surrogacy -- even though the practice has historic roots. Some polygamous ethnic Igbo or Yoruba clans used surrogates when a wife was unable to conceive.

In some Igbo villages, certain women could "marry" another woman. Any child born from the marriage would take the name of the "female husband" and the male donor´s identity was never divulged. - Social pressure - But as years pass, traditions fade. In their place, a relatively lucrative but murky and secretive system has developed.