Young women in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, university students, mostly are injecting fertility hormones and undergoing egg harvesting procedures to pay school fees and survive inflation.

This is not rare anymore. It is a movement.

Over 94% of egg donors in Nigeria are motivated purely by money. Not altruism. Not medical awareness. Money.

A donor receives ₦150k–₦350k. The clinic charges the recipient up to ₦7 million for the same cycle. A broker pockets the difference. The girl with overworked ovaries gets the smallest cut of a transaction built on her body.

Here is what nobody tells these girls before they sign: the procedure “overclock” your reproductive system.

Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome can cause severe abdominal pain, kidney failure, blood clots.

And some women are donating 5, 6, 7 times. The long-term fertility data for Nigerian women? It barely exists.
Many are told the injections are “just vitamins.”

This industry runs on desperation. When poverty leaves a woman no real choice, her signature on a consent form is not truly free. That is not empowerment. That is coercion with a clipboard.

Nigeria has no National ART Act. No donor cap. No mandatory insurance. Clinics self-regulate. Enforcement outside Lagos is virtually zero.

The “Sapa” economy is now harvesting biological material from our daughters and sisters, and calling it a side hustle.

Mothers, talk to your daughters. Policymakers, pass the ART Bill. Nigerians, let us have this conversation.
Your body is not a gig economy.