Just remembered a moment from my 30th birthday dinner. 40 people - family , friends , colleagues & they had gone on and on about how wonderful I am etc.
It’s my brothers turn to speak and he says “To all the male friends here who have said all these great things about her, SHAME ON YOU! Why haven’t you dated or married her then? “ 🤣
Still can’t believe my wife made us pay our rent way ahead of time and stocked up the house with food, prepaid meter unlimited, just before we started wedding expenses 😂 😂
My cousin has been married for 6 years. No child yet.
At every family gathering, the aunties find her first.
"When are we eating rice?"
"Your mates are on their third."
"Is something wrong with you or him?"
She smiles. Every time. The same smile.
Last Christmas, I watched her hold my sister's baby for a long time.
Nobody was watching her face. I was.
IVF IN NIGERIA: I WILL EXPOSE ALL THE BAD PRACTICES
BEFORE YOU DO IVF IN NIGERIA, PLEASE READ THIS POST
READ, SHARE AND REPOST. Walk with me. A long read!
Dear Nigerians,
You know I am always here for you.
When Hope Is Monetised: A Quiet Reckoning with IVF Practice in Nigeria
I will speak now, carefully and firmly, and without raising my voice, because some truths do not need shouting. They only need honesty, and courage, and a willingness to look at oneself in the mirror and not look away.
IVF is hope with a needle, and science with a prayer stitched quietly into it. And so when hope is mishandled, when science is bent, when desperation is treated as a business model, something sacred is broken. Not loudly. But deeply.
Too many IVF centres in Nigeria are breaking that trust.
Yes, success rates can be high in a batch, and yes, miracles do occur. But statistics, like stories, must be told whole. To announce a 70% success rate without disclosing the average is to sell aspiration without context. Globally, we know the numbers hover around 39–45%, and patients deserve that truth, not a curated fantasy designed to make them sign consent forms with trembling hands.
And then there is competition. Oh, how ugly it becomes when it forgets dignity. To pull another centre down in order to appear taller is not excellence; it is insecurity dressed in a lab coat. Let your outcomes speak. Let your ethics speak louder.
Some women should not proceed with IVF at a given time. A thin endometrium is not an inconvenience to be ignored because the patient is hopeful and uninformed. It is a message. And good medicine listens before it acts.
There is also the quiet danger of underqualified hands, staff hired cheaply, trained poorly, and placed in rooms where lives, embryos, futures are handled. Cost-cutting that endangers patients is not innovation; it is negligence pretending to be efficiency.
And please, let us stop pretending we can guarantee twins or triplets. Doctors are not gods, no matter how advanced the laboratory. To promise multiples is to lie, softly perhaps, but still to lie. Worse still is the reckless transfer of too many embryos, gambling with women’s bodies in the name of higher odds. The world has moved toward single-embryo transfer for a reason. Multiple pregnancies are not trophies; they are high-risk realities.
Patients, already bruised by time and bills and monthly disappointment, deserve respect. Not eye-rolling. Not impatience. Not silence. Certainly not deception, like injecting hCG injection to manufacture a positive pregnancy test, or withholding a negative result because 'she isn’t ready to hear it.' Who decides readiness? Truth delayed is still harm delivered.
You are a serial killer if you inject hcg injections to your patients so it looks like it's positive pregnancy test.
And then there is the cruelty of omission: skipping essential medications to save money and calling it 'coasting,' proceeding to egg retrieval when stimulation has clearly failed, administering placebos as if patients will not one day ask questions. These are not grey areas. They are wrong.
Bad news must be broken gently, and honestly, and by people trained to hold grief without dropping it. Counselling is not an optional extra. It is part of care.
If a procedure is beyond your skill, refer. If a complication occurs, disclose. Duty of candor is not a Western idea; it is a human one.
And yes, IVF is expensive. Drugs are costly. But exploitation wears a particular smell, and patients can sense it even when invoices are wrapped in polite language.
Medications are not communal property. Embryos are not to be shared, traded, or 'managed' without explicit consent. These are not resources. They are possibilities. They are futures.
STOP GIVING PEOPLE'S EMBRYOS OUT WITHOUT CONSENT. YALL BE MOVING MAD!
Do your best, always. But remember the limits of medicine.
Playing God has never ended well.
IVF is already an emotional rollercoaster, and patients climb aboard with faith, and fear, and emptied savings accounts. What they deserve is transparency, integrity, and care that does not flinch when tested.
So this is a call,not for punishment, but for accountability. Not for silence, but for reform. Not for perfection, but for decency. Do better.
Because hope, when entrusted to you, should never leave your hands diminished.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY IS NOT ENJOYMENT, DEAR NIGERIAN MOMS AND DADS.
Dear Parents,
When Love Feeds Too Much
I say this with love. Because love, real love, is not silence when truth is needed. I have seen mothers beam proudly at their round babies. their cheeks folding into their necks, their arms buried beneath rolls of softness and I have heard the chorus: 'Ah, doctor, he’s enjoying!'
And I smile, but my heart aches.
Because I know that enjoyment is not obesity. Enjoyment is health.
Enjoyment is balance, a child whose heart does not labour before its time, whose pancreas is not already tired, whose tiny joints will not ache too soon.
Childhood obesity is not cute.
It is not wealth. It is not 'God’s blessing in abundance.'
It is a slow, silent inheritance of suffering- whispering diabetes, calling hypertension, inviting heart disease long before adulthood.
And yet, I understand. We feed because love, for many of us, is measured in food. We feed to prove care, to show abundance, to say we can now afford what our parents could not.
But sometimes, love becomes indulgence. Sometimes, feeding becomes soothing. Sometimes, portion sizes become proof of prosperity and in doing so, we wound with what we call care.
So, dear mothers and fathers, let us raise healthy children, not heavy ones. Let us teach them the joy of movement, not the comfort of stillness. Let us choose fruit over fizzy drinks, water over sweetened milk, playtime over endless screen time.
Because true enjoyment is not in the folds of a baby’s arms. It is in the rhythm of a strong heartbeat.
It is in the laughter of a child who runs freely. It is in the peace of a body that will carry them into adulthood without pain.
This is not judgment. This is love, firm, truthful, and deeply protective. Because health begins in the arms that rock the cradle.
Again, for those of us with kids at home, please be patient with them. In everything you do, always remember their age. Their brains are still developing, and they cannot handle too much information at once.
Some of you bombard them with too much information and then spank them when they forget. Please stop it. They are not stupid. They are not dumb. They are not slow. They are just kids trying to learn how many things work.
Some parents send their kids to do five different things, and when the child remembers the first and second things but forgets the rest, they begin to cry. Then, when they finally gather a little courage to come talk to you with tears streaming down their face, you beat them on top of that. Not cool.
Here’s what you can do to help them:
- Send them to do one thing at a time, or maybe two things at a time, depending on how old they are. You are their parent, you should know.
- Ask them to repeat the instructions after you. For example: “Go and bring me a comb, a knife, and a bandage.” Then ask them to look at you and repeat: “Comb, knife, bandage.”, and if they come back with two things instead of three, try again, if it doesn't work, then that should tell you something. Give them time, and they will get there. I promise.
Please don’t beat them. Instead of beating them… come and beat me. 🤲🏾🥹