My Thoughts Have No Filter By Abdul’Azeez Bello
WhatsApp: 0805 113 0075 | omobolajibello@gmail.com
E Don Reach Like This? Na Your Kidney Dem Wan Buy.
Make I talk to you straight. No grammar. No big English. Just truth.
Somewhere in Nigeria right now, a young person is sitting, hungry, broke, frustrated, looking at the phone, and a message just entered. The message says there is easy money. Simple procedure. Quick cash. No stress.
That young person is your child. Your neighbour. Your younger sibling. Your cousin who just finished school and cannot find work.
And the person sending that message wants one thing. The kidney. Not the time. Not the talent. Not the hustle. The actual physical kidney of the young person. The one inside the body. The one they were born with. The one they need to survive.
When young Nigerians begin to see their kidneys as emergency savings, we are no longer talking about ordinary economic hardship. We are talking about desperation at its most frightening.
Desperation at its most frightening. That is exactly what this is. And this piece is here to tell that desperation the truth it needs to hear before it makes a decision that cannot be undone.
How the Business Works. Because This Is a Business.
Let me show you how the kidney market operates because understanding the system will help protect you from yourself and your children.
This investigation by Daily Trust in 2023 uncovered a cell of kidney agents planted in satellite communities to target and lure young men from low economic backgrounds to sell their kidneys.
Kidney agents. That is a real job title in 2026. Someone gets up in the morning, goes to a poor community, identifies desperate young people and recruits them for organ removal. They collect a commission. Ten percent of whatever the victim receives. While the hospital, the doctor and the buyer share the real money.
So, if kidney is worth between ten thousand and forty thousand dollars on the international market. The buyer pays that. The agent, the doctor, the middleman and the hospital split the rest. You sold your most important internal organ. For roughly three percent of its market value. While everyone around you got rich. And they called that quick money.
The Part That Go Make You Vex Pass Everything
Now here is the part that should make every Nigerian stand up from the seat.
Aminu Yahuza was lured by two of his own friends, Abdulrahman and Habib, two brothers who had equally sold a kidney each. Their job was to target and lure youths from low economic backgrounds to sell their kidneys.
His friends. His own people. The same boys he grew up with. The same people he trusted. They had already sold their own kidneys. And instead of warning him, instead of saying na scam run, they recruited him. Because they were getting commission. Because GREED had turned friendship into a transaction. Because the family system had degraded them so completely that they were now hunting their own.
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.
You see that? That is the full cycle. Young person sells kidney. Gets money. Buys okada or builds a small room. Community sees the money. Community asks questions. Young person becomes recruiter. Recruits more young people. Gets commission. Cycle continues. Victims multiply.
This is how a network grows. Not through force. Through economics. Through the visible proof that the money is real and the desperate need is everywhere.
Many patients, strangers, even family and friends have been approaching people this year alone asking if they know someone who buys organs. Your auntie might call you tomorrow. Your holy member might slide into your DM. Your course mate from university might reach out after years of silence. And the conversation might go somewhere you never expected.
Samuel’s Story. This One Is Real. Very Real.
No fictional scenarios here. This happened.
A message offering quick money and describing the procedure as a simple medical exercise allegedly set in motion a chain of events that ended with Samuel Ezekiel undergoing an operation in Abuja.
Samuel Ezekiel, 22 years old, was taken to a hospital in Life Camp, Abuja on April 24, 2026, where his kidney was allegedly removed. The payment was $1,250, equivalent to about N1.7 million.
Twenty-two years old. Not sixteen. Not fourteen. Twenty-two. Old enough to vote. Old enough to drive. Old enough to know better under normal circumstances. But desperation does not respect age. Desperation does not care how educated you are or how street smart you think you are. When you have nothing and someone offers something, the brain does not always work the way it should.
Samuel is alive. He has one kidney now. He will live with the consequences of one desperate decision for the rest of his life.
Two nephrologists and two other suspects were arrested on August 27, 2026 following a sting operation. Arrested. Not convicted yet. Not sentenced yet. Just arrested. Meanwhile Samuel still has one kidney.
The Girl Wey Dem Carry Go Abroad
Because this thing is not only kidneys. That is the part that should terrify every parent.
A 19-year-old woman from Delta State met a woman in September 2025 who introduced her to others. She was taken abroad. A medical examination later indicated that her womb had allegedly been removed without her consent before she was returned to Nigeria. The suspects subsequently brought her back to Nigeria and abandoned her in Lagos.
Her womb. Not her kidney. Her womb. She was nineteen. She thought she was going for an opportunity. She came back to Nigeria without an organ that had nothing to do with kidneys. Without her consent. Abandoned in a city that was not her home. Had to find her way back to Delta State on her own.
Today a kidney. Tomorrow a womb. Next week what? Eyes? Corneas? Liver? Bone marrow? The merchants are not sentimental. They sell whatever the market is buying. And the market is buying everything. The human body has a price list and the traffickers have it memorised.
The latest and most heinous dimension to human trafficking in Nigeria is that it has gone beyond sexual exploitation. The traffickers are now also harvesting human organs, a very lucrative enterprise.
Very lucrative. Those two words should frighten you. Because lucrative means the incentive is enormous. Lucrative means new people are entering the business every month. Lucrative means the network is growing faster than the law can shrink it.
The Poverty Pipeline is Feeding the Organ Market
Let me connect the dots that the government would prefer you do not see connected.
The vulnerability making people susceptible to organ brokers is economic desperation. That is the direct link. Economic desperation equals vulnerability.
From unemployment. From food prices that have risen 582 percent since 2020. From rent that takes 70 percent of your income. From a minimum wage that cannot buy two bags of rice a month. From a healthcare system that will bankrupt your family if anyone gets seriously ill. From a government that keeps announcing interventions that never arrive at the bus stop where the desperate young person is standing.
Reports of greedy young people selling their kidneys for as little as N1.7 million reflect a level of economic desperation that goes beyond ordinary hardship. Food. Rent. School fees. Not cars. Not holidays. Not luxury items. Just the basic requirements of a dignified life. And Nigerians are removing organs from their bodies to afford them.
To Every Young Nigerian Reading This: Hear Me Well
I am not talking to you as an English letter writer or a commentator. I am talking to you as someone who knows the street and knows what desperate feels like.
That message in your phone about quick money and a simple procedure? Delete am. Block the number. Run, hide and warn other to do same!
The N1.7 million sounds like a lot until you understand what it costs. You will spend the rest of your life with one kidney. Every infection, every illness, every medical decision for the rest of your life will carry the weight of that one desperate moment when you said yes. You cannot un-remove a kidney. No amount of money buys it back. No regret reverses the surgery.
The money from selling an organ does not last. The recipient gets the organ. Someone else profits from your desperation. An organ cannot be replaced like a phone or clothing.
Your body is not a business. Your organs are not assets to be liquidated when cash is short. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not your friend, your helper or your opportunity. They are a thieves, scammers. The most intimate kind of thief. One who steals from inside your body.
If you know someone who went through this and came back with money and a scar and a story, do not be impressed. Be scared. For them. For yourself. For anyone they might try to recruit next.
To Every Parent: The Talk You Must Have Tonight
Not tomorrow. Tonight.
Sit down with your child. Your teenager. Your young adult who is struggling. The one who you know is desperate. The one whose situation you have been quietly worried about.
Tell them what is happening in Nigeria right now. Tell them that people are being recruited by their own friends. Tell them that the recruiter looks like opportunity. Tell them that the procedure sounds simple until it is done. Tell them about Samuel Ezekiel, 22 years old, one kidney, Nasarawa State, April 2026.
A 17-year-old boy had his kidney harvested according to a case that went viral. Minors are not exempt from this trade. Tell your child that age is not protection. Naivety is not protection. Trust in a friend is not protection in this market.
The only protection is the conversation you have before the recruiter does.
What the Government Must Do and Follow Through
We are not asking for speeches. Speeches have been given. Promises have been made. Committees have been set up. Press conferences have been held.
NAPTIP and the Nigeria Police Force have increasingly treated alleged organ trafficking as a criminal and trafficking issue. But arrests are only the beginning. After the arrest must come prosecution. After prosecution must come conviction. After conviction must come a sentence serious enough to make the next doctor think twice.
Prosecute every case to full public conclusion.
In 2024, the managing director of a hospital was arraigned before the FCT High Court over alleged organ harvesting. That case must reach its conclusion publicly and the verdict must be announced loudly. Because justice that nobody hears about deters nobody.
Build a national organ trafficking database immediately.
Every reported case of suspected illegal organ removal must be centrally documented, cross-referenced and analyzed for patterns. Traffickers operate in networks. Individual state investigations miss the national picture. A central database makes the pattern visible and the response coordinated.
Regulate private hospitals and medical facilities rigorously.
Any hospital performing organ-related procedures must be subject to mandatory reporting, independent oversight and surprise inspections. A doctor who participates in illegal organ harvesting must lose their licence permanently. Not suspended. Permanently.
Address poverty and unemployment as organ trafficking prevention.
The most effective long-term strategy against organ trafficking in Nigeria is making the desperation that feeds it less acute. Employment, social protection, affordable healthcare and accessible financial services reduce the vulnerability that traffickers exploit. These are not separate issues. They are the same issue.
Educate communities actively and consistently.
The information about what organ trafficking looks like, how recruiters operate and what to do if approached must reach every community in Nigeria especially rural and economically vulnerable ones. In languages people understand. Through channels people trust. Including community leaders, religious figures and local radio.
The Verdict
Samuel Ezekiel is twenty- two years old and he is living with one kidney because someone found him at his most desperate and offered him what sounded like a way out.
The nineteen years old from Delta State will carry what was done to her body for the rest of her life. She was a teenager. She met a woman who seemed helpful. She trusted the wrong person at the wrong time in a place that had not protected her well enough to make trusting wrong people less likely.
Nigeria don see una. The net is coming. And every organ you steal from a desperate young Nigerian is evidence that will find you eventually.
To the government: your children are being harvested. This is not a policy paper. This is an emergency.
To Nigerian parents: the conversation you have not had with your child about this could be the conversation that saves them. Have it tonight.
And to every young Nigerian who is desperate enough right now to consider something that sounds too easy to be true:
Your body is not for sale. Your organs are not currency. You are worth more than your parts.
Abdul’Azeez Bello writes from the streets of Nigeria, where the truth is always louder than the headlines.
My Thoughts Have No Filter.
Never miss a moment! Get the stories shaping Nigeria, delivered straight to your phone. Follow Peoplesdaily Newspaper on WhatsApp for breaking news, exclusive reports, and the headlines everyone will be talking about, before anyone else.
