“Baby Farm” Review—EbonyLife’s Diagnosis of Deep-lying Social Diseases Is A Hospitable Cinematic Agenda 

Stories about the underworld, narratives that reveal the intricacies of organized crime, have often made it to the Nollywood corpus. The underworld in such stories is connected with powerful individuals and groups, some belonging to the political class, enabled by state authorities. We have examples of these stories in classics like Glamour Girls and more sophisticated, modern cinema productions such as the King of Boys and Oloture franchises. EbonyLife Studios have particularly lately been committed to this course, with projects like Oloture and Oloture: The Journey mirroring the sleazy world of sex trafficking in West Africa and, now, Baby Farm uncovering the sinister operations of a foundation.

Baby Farm is a five-episode series written by Darrel Bristow-Bovey and produced by Temidayo Makanjuola and Inem King. The directors of the series are Walter “Waltbanger” Taylour and Kayode Kasum. The Netflix series tells the story of Adanna (Oyinye Odokoro), a young lady who gets pregnant out of wedlock in Aba, Abia State, and leaves in search of her boyfriend in Lagos, where she is exposed to the brutality of existence in the city. Needing to survive, Adanna is manipulated into joining The Evans Foundation Clinic, a non-governmental organization run by foreigners Dr. Oliver (Langley Kirkwood) and Barbara (Jenny Stead). The organization is known to match babies born to destitute mothers with rich couples in need of children, providing less bureaucratic child adoption opportunities.

However, Adanna soon learns that the organization is not what it claims to be, that it is a shield for a baby factory. Here, impoverished and hopeless young women are held hostage, forcefully impregnated and continually make babies that are snatched from them immediately after birth and sold off against the mothers’ will. Upon discovery, Adanna begins to plot an escape from the facility, also having to deal with betrayal from fellow inmates, particularly Ebun (Genoveva Umeh). Meanwhile, desperate high-flying actress Cherise Uko (Rita Dominic) and her husband Akin (Joseph Benjamin) consider adoption from the foundation after a series of miscarriages. In her quest for her next big celebrity story, infamous blogger Joy (Folu Storms) tails Cherise, but the blogger is considered a threat when she dangerously comes too close to the foundation. And there’s Ify (Kiki Omeili) whose attempts to find her missing sister Emem (Ruby Akubueze) that is trapped in the foundation proves abortive.

Beyond the overarching motif of the underworld, there are similarities in character constructs between Baby Farm and the Oloture franchise. This, possibly coincidental, is especially visible with their female protagonists. The female leads are deeply disturbed and partly chaotic in appearance, which is understandably occasioned by their circumstances, but we can also easily perceive them as “silently powerful.” Though lacking in charisma, they are strong-willed, curious, intelligent, and resistant to the status quo—their vulnerabilities shrouded by sheer guts and defiance. Intelligence, it appears, is the most potent weapon in their arsenal as they attempt to resist seemingly unshakeable and ignoble systems that threaten to overwhelm them. In Oloture, the eponymous protagonist is an investigative journalist who disguises as a sex worker and embarks on a perilous journey to tell the hidden story of sex trafficking in the region. Similarly, in Baby Farm, Adanna gets trapped in a baby factory where she unyieldingly orchestrates her escape on three occasions, failing the first two times, until she regains her freedom. Both Oloture and Adanna are largely characterized as small fries, underprivileged individuals who somehow become emergency beacons of hope for the empathetic audiences in their respective struggles against subterranean strongholds of oppression.

In Baby Farm, we discover the use of manipulation as a means to exploit and perpetrate systemic oppression. This is noticeable in what the Evans Foundation Clinic stands for—a facade. To the populace, it is a noble, charitable organization, but this is a contrast to its devious, sham reality. The founders are white foreigners Oliver and Barbara, putting up a front that creates a sense of security, novelty, and elitism, which allows the foundation to easily attract the creme de la creme of society. Also, the foundation organizes public programmes, particularly fundraisers, that help to maintain relevance and sustain a feeling of reliability.

Another manipulative tactic is the patronage of state authorities, especially the police force, to their advantage. Towards the end of the series, in the final moments of episode five, we see a scene where a senior police officer, in a conspiratorial tone, attempts to save himself from any scandal as he tells Oliver to set fire to his office and leave the premises to destroy available evidence. It is obvious here that the police boss has an alliance with the NGO. These moments not only capture the complicity of institutions that are supposed to protect the interests of the masses but also speaks, in a microcosmic way, to a general dysfunction of the Nigerian criminal justice system.

Speaking of which, there is a caricature of the police force in the scene where Ify visits a police station to report her suspicions only for the police officer to make jest of her claims. We have another case in episode five where Cherise Uko and Akin, on their way out of the country, encounter an officer at the airport who solicits a kickback. The ineptitude of law enforcement agents is further captured in a conversation between Ify and Joy, where the latter dismisses the former’s paranoia and urges her to report to the authorities. What, according to Joy, and, sadly, rightly so, chances do they stand as commoners in an attempt to get the police to investigate rich foreigners? As the series progresses, Ify’s confidence in the authorities dissipates. This peak of distrust surfaces in Ify’s resolve to expose the foundation’s dirty secrets through an unconventional approach, tactfully dissociating herself from the exposé.

The EbonyLife series shows a connection between femininity and victimhood. Just as in the Oloture franchise, women in this series are portrayed as victims, the targets of an oppressive structure. The women are degraded and dehumanized, treated as nothing more than mere baby-producing machines. The foundation capitalizes on the helplessness, pessimism, and low self-esteem of the ladies, luring them into the foundation through sweet promises of care and a better life. As such, the portrayal of women in the series underscores the systemic objectification of women, a social cankerworm in mostly patriarchal societies like Nigeria.

Traces of class tension are rife in the series, manifesting as economic inequality and social exclusion. We realize, through Oliver’s schemes and use of language, his hatred and disgust for the ladies in his facility and a profound sense of classism. This discriminatory leaning is further heightened by his otherwise lofty regard for Cherise Uko, to whom he wishes to refer her Hollywood friends to the foundation. That being said, the EbonyLife series sparks a strong humanist agenda, catering to our social existence through what seems like musings on the nasty, brutish nature of humans.