Teenagers rescued from Nigerian "baby factory" were sex slaves

At least 35 teenage girls have been rescued from a hotel in Nigeria, which was a front for a "baby factory" where they were used as sex slaves and forced to sell their babies on the black market, according to the Daily Mail. 

The Anambra State Police Command rescued the teenage girls last Monday from the Gally Gally hotel, after receiving tips from residents in the area. The girls were used "for sex slaves, prostitution and baby factories," state police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said Wednesday night.

Nigerian police have previously freed dozens of underage women and babies from illegal maternity homes known as "baby factories," where women are forced to bear children to be sold on the black market.

At the time of the raid on the premises, four of the girls were pregnant, the statement said, while some weapons and cash were recovered from the hotel.

Ikenga argued that investigations were ongoing while the girls would be handed over to government agencies for rehabilitation.

The girls were used to engage in commercial sex after being trafficked to the hotel and the proceeds went to a “madam” who is currently on the run alongside the owner of the hotel. 

Three other suspects accused of kidnapping and trafficking the girls at the hotel to engage them in sex slavery, prostitution and operating the baby factory, have been arrested. 

This is not the first case of this nature in Nigeria. This photo, from September last year, shows mothers with acutely malnourished babies sitting on the floor to be attended to by officials at the primary health clinic in Bini, Wamako district of Sokoto, in northwestern Nigeria.

The so-called "factories" are often small illegal facilities parading as private medical clinics that house pregnant women and offer their babies for sale. In many cases, young women have been held against their will and sexually assaulted before their babies are sold on the black market.

In other cases, unmarried pregnant women are promised medical care just to have their children taken away from them later. In others, women are raped and become pregnant. In April, police raided a baby factory and two unregistered orphanages in Lagos and rescued more than 160 children, some of whom had been sexually abused.

Two months earlier, in February, Lagos police told local media that they had uncovered a case in which a pregnant woman went to a private home to give birth to her baby, only to have it taken away and sold.