Chioma is adamant that Hope, the child boy she is retaining in her hands, is her son.  Then 8 years of failed makes an attempt to conceive, she sees him as her awe child.

“I’m the owner of my baby,” she says defiantly.

She’s sitting later to her husband, Ike, within the place of work of a Nigerian shape reputable who spends the most efficient a part of an date interrogating the couple.

Because the commissioner for ladies affairs and social welfare in Anambra shape, Ify Obinabo has plethora of revel in in resolving community disputes – however that is refuse familiar war of words.

5 participants of Ike’s community, who’re additionally provide within the room, don’t imagine Hope is the couple’s organic kid, as Chioma and Ike declare.

Chioma claims to have “carried” the kid for approximately 15 months. The commissioner and Ike’s community are in disbelief on the absurdity of the declare.

Chioma says she confronted power from Ike’s community to conceive. They even requested him to marry every other girl.

In her desperation, she visited a “clinic” providing an unconventional “treatment” – an outlandish and demanding rip-off preying on ladies determined to turn out to be moms that comes to the trafficking of small children.

The BBC used to be allowed via government to take a seat in at the commissioner’s dialogue with Chioma as a part of our investigation into the cryptic being pregnant rip-off.

We have now modified the names of Chioma, Ike and others on this article to give protection to them from reprisal of their communities.

Nigeria has some of the best delivery charges on the earth, with ladies frequently going through social power to conceive or even ostracisation or abuse in the event that they can’t.

Underneath this power, some ladies progress to extremes to understand their dream of motherhood.

For over a date, BBC Africa Optic has been investigating the “cryptic pregnancy” rip-off.

Scammers posing as docs or nurses persuade ladies that they’ve a “miracle fertility treatment” assured to get them pregnant. The preliminary “treatment” normally prices loads of bucks and is composed of an injection, a drink, or a substance inserted into the vagina.

Not one of the ladies or officers we told to all the way through our investigation know needless to say what’s in those medication. However some ladies have instructed us they ended in adjustments of their our bodies – corresponding to swollen stomachs – which additional satisfied them they have been pregnant.

Girls given the “treatment” are warned to not talk over with any standard docs or hospitals, as refuse scan or being pregnant take a look at would discover “the baby”, which the scammers declare is rising outdoor the womb.

When it’s year to “deliver” the child, ladies are instructed labour will best start as soon as they’re caused with a “rare and expensive drug”, requiring additional cost.

Accounts of ways the “delivery” occurs range, however all are demanding. Some are sedated best to get up with a Caesarean-like incision mark. Others say they’re given an injection that reasons a drowsy, hallucinatory shape wherein they imagine they’re giving delivery.

Both manner, the ladies finally end up with small children they’re intended to have given delivery to.

Chioma tells commissioner Obinabo that once her year to “deliver” got here, the so-called physician injected her within the waist and instructed her to push. She does no longer enchanment out how she ended up with Hope, however says the supply used to be “painful”.

Our crew manages to infiltrate this type of secretive “clinics” – connecting with a girl referred to as “Dr Ruth” to her purchasers – via posing as a pair who’ve been looking to conceive for 8 years.

This so-called “Dr Ruth” runs her medical institution each 2d Saturday of the era in a dilapidated resort within the the city of Ihiala, within the south-eastern Anambra shape. Outdoor her room, dozens of girls look forward to her within the resort corridors, some with visibly sticking out stomachs.

The entire environment is humming with positivity. At one level, excess celebrations erupt throughout the room later a girl is instructed she is pregnant.

When it’s our secret journalists’ flip to peer her, “Dr Ruth” tells them the remedy is assured to paintings.

She offer the girl an injection, claiming it is going to permit the couple to “select” the intercourse in their time child – a scientific impossibility.

Then they flip ailing the injection, “Dr Ruth” palms them a sachet of beaten tablets in addition to some extra tablets for them to tug at house, along side directions on when to have sex.

This preliminary remedy prices 350,000 naira ($205; £165).

Our secret reporter neither takes the medication nor follows any of “Dr Ruth’s” directions and returns to peer her 4 weeks next.

Then working a tool that appears like an ultrasound scanner throughout our reporter’s abdomen, a pitch like a heartbeat is heard and “Dr Ruth” congratulates her on pregnancy.

They each cheer with pleasure.

Then handing over the excellent news, “Dr Ruth” explains how they’ll wish to pay for a “scarce” and costly drug wanted for the child to be born, costing someplace between 1.5 and two million naira ($1,180; £945).

With out this drug, the being pregnant may just lengthen past 9 months, “Dr Ruth” claims with omit for medical reality, including: “The baby will become malnourished – we’d need to build it up again.”

“Dr Ruth” has no longer spoke back to allegations the BBC has put to her.

The level to which the ladies concerned essentially imagine the claims is hazy.

However clues as to why they might be vulnerable to such brazen lies can, partially, be present in on-line teams the place disinformation round being pregnant is pervasive.

Cryptic being pregnant is a recognised scientific phenomenon, wherein a girl is blind to her being pregnant till the past due phases.

However all the way through our investigation, the BBC discovered pervasive incorrect information in Fb teams and pages about this kind of being pregnant.

One girl from america, who dedicates her whole web page to her “cryptic being pregnant”, claims to have been pregnant “for years” and that her journey cannot be explained by science.

In closed groups on Facebook, many posts use religious terminology to hail the bogus “treatment” as a “miracle” for those who’ve been unable to conceive.

All of this misinformation helps solidify women’s belief in the scam.

Members of these groups are not only from Nigeria, but also from South Africa, the Caribbean, and the US.

The scammers also sometimes manage, and post in, these groups, enabling them to reach out to women expressing an interest in the “remedy”.

Once someone expresses readiness to start the scam process, they are invited into more secure WhatsApp groups. There, admins share information about “cryptic clinics” and what the process involves.