A Nigerian man has said that his wife gave birth to 11 babies and is pleading for financial support to take care of the newborns and their mother. Yahaya Nafiu, a 56-year-old Islamic cleric from Ilorin, Kwara State, said that his wife, Latoyossi Alake, a native of Ajasse-Cotonou, gave birth in a traditional home in Porto-Novo in the Benin Republic.
Nafiu said the birth was in two batches — the first set of six arrived on August 7, while the second arrived seven days later, on August 14, Premium Times reported.
54-year-old Alake was delivered of eight males and three females at the traditional birth attendant home, but two of the girls died during delivery, Nafiu said. He is seeking help to take care of the nine surviving babies.
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“A few days after the delivery of the first set of children, my wife said she felt strange movements in her stomach. After a scan was carried out at the hospital, the doctor revealed that she was carrying another set of children, which led them to contact the initial birth attendant, and the next set of five babies was delivered”, Nafiu said.
Alake’s pregnancy lasted over three years before the delivery, according to Nafiu.
“One other major challenge that we are now facing before we could bring the children home to Ilorin to show them to my parents is how to raise money for the marriage rites, as well as medical bill and police report,” the Islamic cleric told the Punch.
History is however repeating itself in Ilorin, according to Abdulmumini Abdulmalik, the national president of the Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union. A few years after the end of World War 1, about a century ago, history was made in Ilorin when a woman gave birth to decuplets (10 babies at a single birth),” Abdulmalik said, as reported by the Premium Times.
Three years ago, a South African woman was reported to have given birth to 10 babies in what would be a new world record. It turned out that she lied about the delivery.
