Odd World ... Baby with Circumcised penis born in Badagry

A 30-year-old woman, Mrs Raimo Mafus, had on June 6 been delivered of the baby at the Convalescence Maternity Home, Mosafejo, near Badagry.

The father of the baby, Mr Mohammed Mafus, 46, told NAN that an imam, Malam Sani from Katsina State, had foretold the birth of a “wonderful child’’.

“The imam, who is my friend, had told my wife sometime ago that she would soon have a great baby,” he said.

He said he could not afford ante-natal expenses at the General Hospital, Badagry, and therefore, took his wife to the maternity home where an auxiliary nurse, Miss Oluwayemisi Obalola, took delivery of the baby.

Mrs Mafus said that during pregnancy, she usually saw a series of signs.

“When I am sitting down, I will be seeing stars surrounding me both in the day and at night. Also, I had pains in my right eye which disappeared the moment I delivered,” she said.

The auxiliary nurse, Obalola, described the birth of the baby as strange.

“That was the way I saw the baby coming out of the womb and it was strange to me because I know that even though I have not seen such before, I have been hearing of it,’’ Obalola said.

She, however, described it as one of the signs of the end-times which Jesus had predicted in the Bible.

Mrs Atiku Naimo, a neighbour of the family, told NAN that “it was a big surprise to everybody’’.

“I helped to bathe him and I saw the penis too. Even the umbilical cord dropped and got dried up the following day,” she said.

But medical experts have disputed the claim that a baby can be born with circumcised penis, saying it might be an abnormality.

Dr Fred Achem, President, Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON), has said that it was medically impossible for a baby to be born circumcised.

He said that when a baby was being formed in the womb, there could be a possibility of abnormalities in the genital formation.

“Like we have abnormalities in the virginal or anus, so also there can be abnormalities in the formation of the penis”

He explained that the development of the penis required a hood of skin called the prepuce and a passage, which connects the penis to the bladder which is the urethra.

According to him, the prepuce is the foreskin that surrounds and protects the head of the penis.

“If the hood of the skin is not properly developed, the penis may appear like it has been circumcised.

“So an absence of the hood of skin over the glands may give a circumcised impression.”

Achem advised that the baby should be taken to the hospital for proper examination.

Other doctors, who did not want their names to be mentioned, corroborated Achem’s views.

One of them said “It is not medically possible to give birth to an already circumcised child; we have not seen that in medical history.

“The child may be having an abnormality involving the penis and many people will look at it as if it was already circumcised. ’ -- culled from ascology.com