{"id":332099,"date":"2025-06-01T08:55:06","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T13:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=332099"},"modified":"2025-05-31T12:33:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T17:33:49","slug":"students-in-nigeria-are-selling-eggs-and-sperm-to-pay-college-tuition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/students-in-nigeria-are-selling-eggs-and-sperm-to-pay-college-tuition\/","title":{"rendered":"Students in Nigeria are selling eggs and sperm to pay college tuition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ethical issues surrounding the fertility industry are on full display in Nigeria, where impoverished college students are selling their eggs and sperm for cash, often so they can afford to pay their tuition.<\/p>\n

KEY TAKEAWAYS:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
    \n
  • In Nigeria, college students are selling their eggs and sperm for cash to pay for tuition.<\/li>\n
  • The students are paid just \u20a650,000 \u2014 $31 \u2014 each time they ‘donate.’<\/li>\n
  • The risks associated with donating eggs<\/a> are frequently downplayed, but the unethical nature of egg and sperm donation extends beyond the effects on the donors, as children are treated like consumer products.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    WHAT’S HAPPENING:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    The Daily Nigerian reported<\/a> that IVF centers have quietly been using college students to supply them with eggs and sperm for couples wanting donor materials to create children via in vitro fertilization (IVF). Students are paid \u20a650,000 ($31) or more, depending on the facility they work with and the characteristics they have.<\/p>\n

    One journalist, Dorothy Nwankwo, said she was concerned about the ethics of exploiting potentially vulnerable people, while Omolade Olomola \u2014 a professor in Family Law, Reproductive and Gender Justice at the Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan \u2014 said the practice is allowed to flourish due to poverty and a lack of regulations surrounding the fertility industry. Olomola gave the example of a female student taken from Lagos to Abuja to donate her eggs, which the student said was traumatizing.<\/p>\n

    \u201cAt the end of the day, she collected maybe \u20a614,000, because they told her what might have been a lie \u2013 that her eggs were not viable. They didn\u2019t tell her that it was an intrusive procedure, and she was a virgin. She said that she still had emotional and psychological trauma from that procedure,\u201d Olomola explained, with harsh criticism leveled at the fertility industry. \u201cAll they want is to make money to survive in the immediate. What they do with them is very horrible just as people used as a baby factory. They are made to sign an undertaking, and immediately they collect their phones and lock the doors so that they lose their freedom. They bombard them with various injections until the procedure is done. I am not against people selling their eggs or sperm but if it must be done, it must be properly done.”<\/p>\n

    One doctor, Bukumi Kolade, also spoke out against these practices, even as someone who is an expert in IVF. “As long as we have people who need eggs, we will have people who are commercial egg donors, but the young ladies should be made to understand the risks involved in what they are doing,” he said. \u201cIt should not be seen as a means of livelihood.”<\/p>\n