A CHILLING revelation has exposed Nigeria as a major hub in a sprawling global organ trafficking network, where more than 651 kidneys were illegally harvested and sold between 2015 and 2020, generating an estimated $41 billion on the black market, according to Professor Aliyu Abdu, a top nephrologist at Bayero University, Kano (BUK), and consultant at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH).
Professor Abdu made the disclosure during a high-level seminar on National Organ and Tissue Transplantation Standards in Abuja on Tuesday, describing the illicit trade as a “sophisticated underworld enterprise” involving illegal brokers, recruiters, rogue medical professionals, and desperate donors willing to part with their organs for survival.
“These criminal networks connect desperate donors to wealthy recipients, turning human suffering into a lucrative business,” Prof. Abdu said gravely.
He revealed that the Nigerian black market is part of a wider global phenomenon where 10,000 kidneys are sold annually often with minimal post-operative care for donors, leaving them with lifelong health complications, depression, and financial ruin.
According to other experts at the seminar, organ trafficking in Nigeria operates like a well-oiled cartel, involving doctors, nurses, anaesthetists, ambulance drivers, travel agents, and local brokers, all working together to recruit donors, perform secret surgeries, and arrange the sale of kidneys to wealthy recipients sometimes within Nigeria, often abroad.
Despite Nigeria’s National Health Act of 2014, which strictly prohibits the sale of human organs and prescribes jail terms for offenders, enforcement has remained weak, allowing the black market to thrive.
“Without stronger enforcement and ethical medical practices, organ trafficking will continue to thrive, deepening inequality and causing untold suffering for the most vulnerable,” Prof. Abdu warned.
In one of the most shocking and iconic cases of organ trafficking in Nigeria’s history, sixty-year-old Ike Ekweremadu, a former Deputy Senate President and one of Nigeria’s most prominent lawmakers, was found guilty alongside his wife, Beatrice, 56, and a UK-based doctor, Dr. Obinna Obeta, 51 in March 2023, in what became the first-ever guilty verdict under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act for organ trafficking.
After a tense six-week trial at London’s Old Bailey, the jury concluded that the trio had conspired to smuggle a vulnerable 21-year-old Lagos street trader to Britain to harvest his kidney.
Human rights lawyer Frank Tietie called the situation an “epidemic,” lamenting the public’s silence on an issue that preys on Nigeria’s poorest citizens.
“One would expect louder public condemnation, but that has not been the case. People are either selling their organs to escape poverty, or unscrupulous medical personnel are secretly removing organs from patients without consent,” Tietie said.
In 2021, an Abuja hospital was forced to erect a signboard reading “We Don’t Buy Kidneys!” after being flooded with inquiries from people looking to sell their organs following the COVID-19 lockdown.
In News Point Nigeria‘s relentless quest to unravel the chilling mystery surrounding Nigeria’s sinister organ-harvesting underworld, this newspaper tracked down a few individuals who had sold their kidneys after weeks of painstaking secret meetings, intense persuasion, and high-risk undercover journalistic operations.
This newspaper trailed a man who had sold his kidney to the remote village of Chori, deep in Southern Kaduna. The man, simply identified as Kefas, narrated his harrowing journey.
Born and raised in Jos, Kefas said his ordeal began when he ran into a crippling business dispute that left him owing a large sum of money and staring at the prospect of imprisonment.
“To save myself, I fled from Jos to a tiny village in Taraba, hidden in the mountains,” he recalled. “There, through my friend’s brother, I met a man who promised to rescue me from my troubles. At first, I had no idea what he meant but eventually, I discovered that the so-called ‘help’ was to sell my kidney.”
Kefas said he initially resisted the shocking proposal. But as the harassment of his mother by debt collectors in Plateau State intensified, he was left with no choice but to accept the deal.
“I underwent several medical checks at a private hospital in Abuja. When they told me I was medically fit, I agreed to go through with it,” Kefas revealed.
Though he admitted being cheated and receiving only 60% of the promised money, Kefas said the funds were enough to settle his legal troubles in Jos, relocate his mother to Kaduna, and start a small trading business.
“I have no regrets,” he said with a faint, defiant smile. “If I hadn’t done it, I would have been rotting in prison by now, and my mother and sister would still be suffering. This was my only way out.”
News Point Nigeria also pursued another case to Ogun State, where a young man named Bidemi was said to have sold his kidney. Initially, Bidemi agreed to meet our reporter at a distant, pre-arranged location, but at the last moment, he backed out, sending a brief message that he would no longer grant the interview.
A close friend, who also acted as an intermediary for News Point Nigeria, shed light on Bidemi’s troubled life. According to him, Bidemi is a passionate but compulsive football betting enthusiast and a final-year student at a federal university in a neighboring state.
“For Bidemi, it was either money or misery,” the friend disclosed. “He was introduced to the world of kidney sales by an older medical student. The money was meant to fuel his gambling habits and ‘upgrade’ his lifestyle on campus.”
The friend alleged that Bidemi received approximately $4,500 for the kidney he sold in July last year, a significant sum for a struggling student.
However, News Point Nigeria has not been able to independently confirm these claims as Bidemi’s phone has remained switched off, cutting off all direct communication.
Security reports list Kaduna, Plateau, Rivers, and Ogun as hotbeds for organ trafficking activity and most espacially Abuja, the Federal Capital.
A respected medical doctor in Abuja, simply identified as Zahra Umar, painted a grim picture of Nigeria’s capital city as the epicenter of a flourishing underground organ market.
Speaking with News Point Nigeria, Zahra described Abuja as a “booming hub” for the trade, where the largest and most coordinated syndicates operate with frightening efficiency.
“The business is thriving here, everyone knows Abuja is the headquarters,” Zahra said with a tone of deep concern. “People are desperate. Poverty and hardship have pushed them to the edge.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people; patients, strangers, even my own family and friends have approached me this year alone, asking if I know someone who buys organs. It’s heartbreaking, and it tells you just how dire things have become.”
A senior official of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), who spoke to News Point Nigeria under strict anonymity, corroborated Zahra’s account, revealing that Abuja’s airport have become silent conduits for the trafficking of human organs abroad.
“We’ve intercepted concealed organs before some arrests were made, but many cases still slipped through undetected,” the FAAN official disclosed gravely.
“This network is enormous, well-funded, and disturbingly sophisticated. If you’ve ever wondered how a billion-dollar illegal industry can flourish in plain sight with so few arrests, that should tell you how powerful these syndicates truly are.”
But according to Femi Thomas, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, not every so-called “irregular” transplant is done under duress. During his painstaking research in southwest Nigeria, Thomas discovered a growing trend of young men voluntarily trading their kidneys in exchange for what they called “quick cash.”
“These were not coerced victims,” Thomas revealed. “Many were fully aware of what they were doing and were lured by the promise of as much as $3,000.”
To put this into perspective, a single kidney can fetch between $10,000 to $40,000 from a recipient, according to a classified DSS medical security report obtained by News Point Nigeria.
However, Thomas explained that most donors never actually receive the full amount promised. “I personally met young men with fresh, jagged scars on their abdomens, stark evidence of the surgery they underwent.
“They had no fear of prosecution because law enforcement rarely follows through, making this trade feel almost consequence-free.”
He added that many of these young men returned to their communities with visible signs of sudden wealth purchasing motorbikes, building modest homes, or starting small businesses only to become recruiters for other desperate youths, further feeding the black-market organ economy that stretches well beyond Nigeria’s borders.
The DSS report paints an even grimmer picture: less than 10% of required organ transplants are performed legally worldwide, forcing thousands of Nigerians to seek organs through illegal means.
The crisis is further worsened by the shockingly low number of legal transplant centers across Africa, just 35 for the entire continent, according to the security report.
This shortage, fueled by limited accessibility, inadequate expertise, and a chronic lack of funding, has created the perfect storm for traffickers to thrive.
Because of the highly lucrative and clandestine nature of the trade, organ trafficking networks operate with military precision.
The operations require skilled surgeons, anaesthetists, brokers, drivers, and even complicit politicians all working together to connect donors and wealthy recipients while staying several steps ahead of law enforcement.
Thomas believes what he witnessed in Ogun is merely the tip of a global iceberg. “Some of the doctors involved could even speak Swahili and they were Indians and Chinese by origin.
“That confirmed for me that this is not just a Nigerian issue, it is an internationally coordinated syndicate of human body part traffickers”, he concluded.
Nigeria now stands at a dangerous crossroads torn between crushing poverty and a thriving, billion-dollar black market that trades in human life itself.
The revelations from experts, victims, and whistleblowers paint a grim portrait of a nation where desperation has commodified the human body, where kidneys are bartered for survival, and where organized syndicates profit from the misery of the poor with chilling impunity.
This is more than a health crisis, it is a moral, economic, and security emergency. The fact that airports, private clinics, and even respected professionals have been implicated shows just how deep the rot has spread. Each kidney sold is not just a statistic, but a human story of hunger, despair, and systemic failure.
Unless the government moves beyond rhetoric to enforce the National Health Act with ruthless efficiency, invest massively in legal transplant facilities, and create more safety nets for its most vulnerable citizens, this illicit trade will continue to flourish. It will not only claim more victims but also erode the nation’s moral compass, normalizing a dark economy where life itself has a price tag.
The time to act is now. The fight against organ trafficking must be waged with the same urgency as the fight against terrorism because in many ways, it is another kind of terrorism: one that silently harvests the bodies of the poor while enriching the powerful.