Catherine Emeagwali stared into the fragile baby’s dim eyes. Someone had hurriedly wrapped the barely-a-day-old girl in shabby clothes. Her translucent skin and faint veins bore bruising from a rushed birth. Her tiny, uncoordinated feet and hands were covered with dirt. The child had been abandoned underneath a bridge and left exposed.
“My arms were her home now,” Emeagwali said.
Emeagwali has managed Mother Theresa Children’s Home—a private Christian orphanage funded by local donations—for nine years in a quiet suburb of Abuja, Nigeria. The home’s doors are open to vulnerable and abandoned children—some left at the front gate, found in the bush, dumped in garbage sites, rescued from trafficking, or brought to the orphanage by Good Samaritans. The two-story orphanage currently houses 11 children ranging from 1 to 17 years old.
Emeagwali’s mother founded the orphanage in 2007 in response to Nigeria’s crisis of orphanhood and child abandonment. Nigeria has the world’s second-highest reported number of orphans at 17.5 million, behind India’s 30 million. Mother Theresa’s is one of only 278 listed orphanages providing safe shelter—and the possibility of family—to children in Nigeria.
In February 2024, the National Human Rights Commission received 339 complaints of child abandonment across the country, one of the highest rates in any month on record. Nigeria’s high mortality rate, ongoing conflicts, and teenage pregnancies exacerbate the rising number of children without parents.
Emeagwali works with the child welfare department in Abuja to facilitate both domestic and international adoptions in hopes of finding permanent homes for the children who come to her. The orphanage’s walls are plastered with pictures and names of children who once called it home. In some photos, the children pose in their elementary school graduation regalia. Emeagwali has seen 60 children adopted since she began managing the home in 2016.
“The ultimate goal for each child is to be adopted into a loving family,” Emeagwali said.
But legal adoption in Nigeria—though only requiring low costs for citizens (as little as 1.5 million naira, roughly $932 USD) —remains a complex and underutilized process, worsened by cultural and bureaucratic barriers. In 2023, the US State Department warned against international adoption from Nigeria due to fraud, corruption, and unreliable documentation. The State Department also raised concerns about illegal adoption practices, such as coercion and child-buying. The Federal Ministry of Women Affairs in Nigeria also acknowledged some guardians molested and mistreated children in their care.
Emeagwali lamented the lack of proper vetting for adoptive parents. At the same time, she said, bureaucratic processes leave qualified prospective parents disappointed. Meanwhile, desperate couples across Nigeria seek children through illegal channels, sometimes paying millions of naira to get babies. Emeagwali recalled one story of a woman who paid illegal sources 2 million naira (about $1,250 USD) for a baby, then never received the child.
Last January, police in Lagos state arrested eight suspects, including men and women, for selling newborns and young children. Mobolaji Ogunlende—the state commissioner for youth and social development and the one handling the case—acknowledged that the lengthy adoption process may be partly to blame.
Human trafficking related to “baby factories”—institutions in which women “are voluntarily or forcibly impregnated” and held illegally until their babies can be sold after birth—ranked as the third most common crime in Nigeria in 2006.
Nigerian culture puts up additional barriers. Adopted children are sometimes accused of doing witchcraft or causing misfortunes in their adoptive homes. In December 2021, an organization called IHRDA (Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa) sued Nigeria for failing to protect these children from abuse. Some Nigerians believe adoption opens the way for fertility. Without proper vetting and follow-up with adoptive parents, abuse can go unnoticed.
“It is heartbreaking that these children are sometimes in danger of returning to conditions from which they were rescued,” Emeagwali told CT. “They are not objects to be used and dumped at will.”
To combat abuse, the child welfare department in Abuja updated its policy to require families to foster children for three months before adoption can be certified, acting director of the department Idris Yahaya told CT.
Emeagwali has submitted proposals to the child welfare department in Abuja for vetting families more effectively and hiring more social workers to visit adoptive families, but the Nigerian government hasn’t moved forward yet with these reforms.
Emeagwali said she hopes churches will get more involved in adoption by organizing seminars where adoptive parents can help others learn through their successes and failures.
“By this way, we can weed out bad adoptions and make every adoption story a success,” she said.
The baby Emeagwali found under a bridge in 2018 became one of her success stories. The little girl tested positive for HIV at the hospital the next morning. Still, doctors remained optimistic about her recovery. With diligent care—sterilized bottles, safe feeding, and medication—her HIV status turned negative within months. Emeagwali said a vetted Christian family adopted the child on the weekend of her first birthday.
“Adoption is beautiful when done for the right reasons but devastating when done for the wrong reasons,” Emeagwali said.
“But as long as [the children] are with me,” she added, “they will have a home.”
