• A Nigerian woman shared how her years-long struggle to conceive pushed her into a world of fraudulent pastors and illegal adoption schemes
  • She recounted rubbing a sleeping snail on her body and stepping outside naked at midnight after a pastor blamed her childlessness on marine spirits
  • The woman later uncovered a suspicious baby-selling operation disguised as adoption when she pressed for legal documentation

A Nigerian woman going by the handle [@lifeofSjay] has opened up about the harrowing lengths she went to in her search for a child, revealing how desperation led her into a shadowy world of exploitation that she says many women in Nigeria know all too well.

In a candid video shared on August 31, the woman spoke directly to camera from her home, recounting years of marriage without children and the relentless stream of "solutions" that people brought to her door.

When a Pastor Blamed Marine Spirits

One contact referred her to a pastor in Abuja who, after receiving money from her, told her that marine spirits were the cause of her childlessness. His prescribed remedy was specific: she was to find a sleeping snail at the market, one identifiable by a white film covering its shell, bring it home, rub its contents over her entire body, then step outside naked at midnight to pray with a bowl of water.

She followed the instructions. When she came back inside, the reality of what she had just done hit her hard. "I felt so stupid," she said, and she never returned to that pastor again.

A friend who had referred her showed no sympathy, telling her that other women had gone to that same pastor's church and undressed on the altar to pray, and questioning why she was unwilling to do the same.

A Baby Deal That Unravelled

Before relocating to Canada, the woman also pursued adoption in Nigeria. An agent sent her photographs of babies, and she selected a girl, paying 1.2 million naira to speed up the process. But the promised documentation never materialised. The agents kept shifting the story, at one point telling her the child would travel from Kaduna to Port Harcourt, and that she would need to collect the baby there rather than in Calabar, where she lived, to avoid anyone knowing her address.

The arrangement fell apart when her workplace introduced a policy granting three months of maternity leave to employees who adopted, provided they could produce legal proof of placement. When she pressed the agents for adoption papers, someone eventually said something that made her walk away entirely.

She also described a separate scheme involving a so-called adoption in Port Harcourt where a woman was expected to pay four million naira, arrive at a hospital on a specified date, wait in a separate room while another woman gave birth, then leave immediately with the newborn and no documentation whatsoever.

"Desperation is a very dangerous place to be," she said, "because people know exactly how vulnerable you are and they can use that vulnerability against you."