Don to FG: Establish sperm banks to tackle infertility and childlessness in Nigeria

By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan.
A senior lecturer with the department of Political Science, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Dr. Amaka Theresa Emordi on Tuesday asked Federal Government to establish sperm banks in Nigeria
Dr Emordi said this in Ibadan while delivering the October lecture of the Nigeria Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) titled ‘Women Bigamists in Southeast Nigeria: The Social Contradictions of the Feminist Struggles’.
According to Dr Amaka, establishment of sperm banks will serve as a major way of tackling ranging problem of infertility and childlessness across the country particularly in the Southeastern part of the country where many women were forced into bigamy.
The lecturer pointed out that this was necessary considering the fact that women without children particularly in the Southeast are devalued and sometimes demonized to have eaten up their children.
“Government should establish sperm banks and encourage anonymous donors of sperms and female eggs to such banks. Such legal sperm and egg banks would proffer solution to the problem of infertility and childlessness which force women into bigamy” she said.
Dr Amaka emphasized that as at present in the country, gender still constitutes one of the inherent obstacles towards the advancement of women especially in Nigeria and many developing countries despite their numerical strength posited that
“The law needs to ensure that the problem of infertility should not be a lonely road for infertile women but a problem that should be handled by both individuals involve (husband and wife).There is a need for gender solidarity and collective will by the women themselves”.
Speaking further, she noted that “women bigamist are women who are engaged in more than one marriage and practice of multiple marriages at the same time and successfully too, the practice she said it still persists in the South Eastern states of Imo, Enugu, Anambra among others”.
“There is the need for aggressive advocacy to provide medical, legal and social support for women seeking to have children of their own. This is because women’s exclusion/marginalization does not occur in isolation; it is connected to other forms of legal and social exclusion”.
She added that “there should be adequate protection by the law and adequate provision for the administration of justice against dehumanizing treatment on chlidless women especially in the rural areas,” saying,”the law should abolish the boy child syndrome and elevate the social status of the girl through educational policy”.