Speaker

Amarachi Chizaram Okonkoh, is a lawyer with experience in diverse areas of legal practice, including in
the field of Health Law and Reproductive Health Law. She earned her Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from Babcock
University in 2015, her Master of Laws (LLM) in 2020 and her doctorate degree from Rivers State
University in 2025. She was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2016.

Amarachi has over the course of her career provided legal advisory services and support across a wide
spectrum of medico-legal matters, drafted health laws and regulation and provided expert legal services
on medico-legal litigations. In the Reproductive Health Law space, she has provided legal advisory services
to intending parents, surrogates and key participants in the fertility sector. In 2021, she successfully
litigated and obtained a legal declaration of Parentage in a Gestational Surrogacy matter from the High
Court and has since continued to support intending parents who resort to surrogacy and Assisted
Reproductive Technology (ART) in completing their families and establishing their parental rights.
Amarachi has researched extensively, written and published on ART issues, advocating the enactment and
adoption of a homegrown, ART-Specific law in Nigeria, that will clarify the rights of parties involved in ART
and ensure its safe and ethical use. At the LLM level, her dissertation was titled ‘Reproductive Technology
and Surrogacy Practices in Nigeria: A Case for Legal Clarity’. At the PhD level, she researched on the topic,
‘An Appraisal of the Legal Issues in Assisted Reproductive Technology: Reflections on the Implications
of Collaborative Procreation In Nigeria’. Some of her publications include:
i. Parental Order as an Affirmation of Legal Parentage in Gestational Surrogacy Cases- A Review of
Re: Olatunde (2024).
ii. Contract for Gestational Services: Examining the Legal Status and Enforceability of Surrogacy
Arrangements in Nigeria (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).
iii. A Case for the Non-Adoption of Anonymous Gamete Donation Laws in Nigeria (2022)
iv. My Sperm, Your Baby: Gamete Donation, Anonymity and the Nigerian Law (2022).
Amarachi is a lecturer at the Babcock University, School of Law and Security Studies and is a lawyer in the
law firm of George Etomi & Partners. Amarachi is always excited to speak on how the law impacts
reproductive rights and choices and enjoys proffering solutions to complicated medico-legal problems
through her legal expertise.