Law & Society Magazine Investigations | How an alleged organ-trafficking network exposed the uneasy space between Nigeria’s courts, hospitals and identity system
By Law & Society Magazine Investigations
The documents looked ordinary.
There was an affidavit, an identification slip, a birth certificate, a declaration of age and a consent document. Together, they presented the prospective kidney donor to the hospital as a person whose identity had been established and whose participation in the transplant process had been properly documented.
According to the hospital, the documents appeared authentic and were brought through a lawyer.
The police now say they are investigating whether documents of this kind were used to conceal the identities of people recruited as kidney donors in an alleged organ-trafficking network operating between Abuja and Nasarawa.
No lawyer has been named publicly by the police as a suspect in the case, and no finding of criminal wrongdoing has been made against any legal practitioner. The investigation is continuing, with four suspects so far arrested, according to police accounts.
What makes the case particularly disturbing is the allegation that the paperwork may not simply have accompanied the alleged transactions. Investigators believe it may have helped make them possible.
According to the police investigation reported by TheNigeriaLawyer, prospective donors were allegedly taken through processes involving changes to their names and other personal particulars before they were presented for medical procedures. One alleged victim, 22-year-old Samuel Ezekiel, told investigators that he was taken to the Federal High Court in Abuja before going to hospital. He said he was promised about ₦1.7 million for a kidney. The allegations have yet to be tested in court.
If the police account is eventually established, the use of legal documents to alter a donor’s identity would add a troubling dimension to an already serious case. It would suggest that an alleged criminal network did not operate entirely outside the institutions meant to protect citizens, but found ways to move through some of their ordinary procedures.
That possibility deserves closer examination.
The affidavit
For millions of Nigerians, affidavits are part of everyday bureaucracy.
They are used when a name changes, a document is lost, an age needs to be declared or a particular fact has to be formally stated. The process is sufficiently familiar that the document itself can acquire an authority in the eyes of the public that goes beyond what an affidavit actually establishes.
An affidavit is a sworn statement. The person making it declares that the facts contained in it are true. The officer before whom it is sworn administers the oath and authenticates the process. That does not mean that the court has independently investigated every fact contained in the statement.
This is particularly important in a case involving identity.
A person may legitimately change a name without ceasing to be the same person. The new name becomes part of the individual’s records, while the earlier identity and supporting documents remain relevant to establishing continuity.
The concern in the present investigation is different. Police allege that names and other personal particulars were changed for people recruited as donors and that the resulting documents were then used during the medical process.
The investigation will have to establish why those changes were made, who initiated them, who prepared the documents and whether the people involved knew that the information being sworn to was false.
Until that evidence is produced, it would be wrong to conclude that any lawyer who prepared such a document knowingly participated in a crime.
That point is particularly important because lawyers prepare affidavits every day from information supplied by clients. The professional and criminal consequences of preparing a false document depend heavily on what the lawyer knew and did.
The hospital’s version
The medical institution caught up in the investigation has offered its own account.
Wellington Clinics said the donor was recorded in its records as Abubakar Hassan and was admitted on April 24, 2026, for a kidney donation procedure. According to the hospital, he underwent a left donor nephrectomy that day and was discharged four days later. He returned in July for treatment of his surgical wound and removal of the remaining stitches.
The hospital said the procedure was conducted by a specialist team led by Dr Benjamin Friday Oyimeh, a consultant nephrologist and chief executive of Crown Medical and Kidney Centre.
It said the donor arrived with an affidavit, a National Identification Number slip, a birth certificate, an affidavit of consent and a statutory declaration of age. He was accompanied by a man he identified as his brother.
The hospital has denied participating in or benefiting from any financial arrangement involving the transplant. It said the specialist transplant team was responsible for recruiting and evaluating the donor, establishing compatibility, obtaining informed consent and dealing with the ethical and medico-legal requirements of the procedure.
The statement is significant because it separates two questions that are easily collapsed into one.
The first is whether a medical procedure was carried out at a properly equipped facility.
The second is whether the person presented as a donor was recruited and documented in accordance with the law and medical ethics.
A hospital can have genuine medical facilities and qualified doctors while investigators separately examine whether the circumstances surrounding a particular donor complied with the rules governing transplantation.
The hospital’s statement therefore does not settle the larger questions. Nor should the police allegations be treated as proof that the hospital or its medical personnel committed offences.
Those matters must be established by evidence. (Read The Sun’s report on Wellington Clinics’ response)
The people behind the documents
The alleged donors provide the most important part of the story because they reveal what can disappear when an investigation is reduced to paperwork.
Ezekiel told investigators that he was introduced to the arrangement by an alleged recruiter, Emmanuel Odi. He said he was promised ₦1.7 million for his kidney and alleged that the money was subsequently taken by the recruiter.
Another alleged victim, Zulkifilu Abdulkadiri, gave investigators a different account. He alleged that he was lured to Mararaba and later taken to a hospital, where he was injected and lost consciousness. He said he awoke to discover that a kidney had been removed and alleged that he was later given money.
Both accounts are allegations and require corroboration. That could come from medical records, telephone records, financial transactions, travel records, witness statements and the documentation surrounding the procedures. The circumstances in which people are recruited will also matter.
The police have alleged that the network targeted vulnerable young men in Nasarawa and neighbouring areas. If that allegation is proved, investigators will have to determine whether the people involved understood the nature and permanent consequences of the procedure, whether they were free to refuse and whether the promises made to them amounted to legitimate compensation or formed part of an unlawful commercial arrangement.
Poverty does not, by itself, mean that a person cannot give valid consent. But financial desperation can become highly relevant where a person is being offered money in exchange for an organ.
That is why transplant regulation places such weight on informed and voluntary consent.
What Nigerian law says
Nigeria’s National Health Act regulates the removal of tissue from living persons and the transplantation of organs.
Section 48 requires informed consent before tissue is removed from a living person, subject to limited circumstances recognised by law. The Act also prohibits commercial dealing in human tissue and provides for the regulation of facilities involved in transplantation.
The Federal Government has since introduced additional standards.
In March 2025, the Ministry of Health launched national standards and guidelines for establishing and coordinating organ and tissue transplantation services. The framework was intended to strengthen the sector’s regulatory structure, protect donors and recipients, establish minimum standards and improve oversight of transplantation facilities.
The guidelines address issues including voluntary and informed consent, ethical review, donor protection and the registration and oversight of institutions and professionals involved in transplantation. The timing matters. ( See the Federal Government’s announcement on the 2025 transplant guidelines)
The country has a regulatory framework that recognises the risks associated with transplantation. The question now is whether the safeguards worked in this case. That will require investigators to look beyond the operating theatre.
Consent begins before the operation
In an organ transplant, the signing of a consent form is only one part of the process. The circumstances in which the person arrived at the hospital are equally relevant.
Was the donor recruited voluntarily?
Was the relationship between donor and recipient genuine?
Was the donor told about the risks?
Was there an opportunity to obtain independent advice?
Was the donor free from pressure?
Was money offered, and if so, what was it for?
Could the donor withdraw without consequence?
These questions cannot be answered simply by producing a signed document. They require an examination of the process that led to the signature.
This is where the alleged manipulation of identity becomes important. If a person was presented under a name different from the one by which he was previously known, the reliability of the other records surrounding the transplant would inevitably become a matter for investigation.
The purpose of the identity change, if it occurred, may ultimately prove as important as the document itself.
The problem with fragmented identities
Nigeria’s identity system is spread across numerous institutions.
A person can have records with the National Identity Management Commission, banks, telecommunications companies, schools, hospitals, electoral authorities, tax agencies and other public bodies. Each institution may maintain its own records, and the ability to connect those records is not always seamless.
This creates a practical problem when a person’s name or other personal details change.
A legitimate change of name should not erase the person’s previous identity. The records should remain capable of being connected so that institutions can establish continuity.
Where systems are poorly integrated, however, an institution may see only the documents placed before it. That is not necessarily a failure of the institution receiving the document. It can be a consequence of a fragmented system.
But the risks become greater when the transaction is one in which a person’s identity has direct consequences for his safety.
A kidney transplant involving a living donor is not an ordinary administrative transaction. It involves the irreversible removal of an organ from a healthy person.
The verification process should reflect that fact.
The lawyer’s role
The reference to lawyers in the investigation requires particular care.
The police have not publicly named the lawyer or lawyers alleged to have prepared the affidavits. There is no basis, at this stage, for treating the preparation of an affidavit as evidence of criminal participation.
The relevant questions are whether the lawyer knew the information was false, whether the circumstances should have raised concerns that the information required further verification, whether similar documents were prepared for other alleged donors and whether the lawyer had any connection with the alleged recruiters or medical arrangements.
Those questions are matters for evidence. They should not be answered by assumption.
If investigators find that lawyers acted in good faith on false information supplied by clients, that is one set of circumstances. If they find evidence that a legal practitioner knowingly helped construct false identities for the purpose of facilitating organ trafficking, that would be an entirely different matter.
The difference can only be established by a proper investigation.
A warning from Britain
Nigeria has had a recent reminder of the lengths to which people seeking organs may go to satisfy transplant requirements.
The case involving former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice and a doctor in Britain centred, among other issues, on the circumstances surrounding a prospective kidney donor and the claimed relationship between donor and recipient.
The British prosecution resulted in convictions under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act.
The case should not be treated as evidence of what happened in the present Nigerian investigation. The facts and legal systems are different. It does, however, illustrate why transplant safeguards cannot stop at the question of whether a prospective donor arrives with apparently complete paperwork.
The people behind the documents have to be considered as well.
Where the paper trail leads
The police investigation will eventually have to reconstruct the entire journey of the alleged donors. It will have to begin before the first hospital appointment.
Who found them?
Who approached them?
What were they told?
Who arranged transport?
Who introduced them to the lawyer?
Where were the affidavits prepared?
What identification did they produce?
Who paid the associated costs?
Who changed the names or other particulars?
Who introduced them to the medical team?
What relationship did they have with the intended recipients?
And where did the money go?
The answers may be found in places that have little apparent connection to the medical procedure: telephone records, bank transfers, court files, identity databases, vehicle movements and messages between recruiters and prospective donors.
That is why the documentary trail matters. It may confirm the allegations. It may contradict them. It may also reveal that different parts of the story were handled by different people who did not know the full purpose of the transaction.
The system should not wait for a conviction
There is a temptation in cases such as this to wait for the police investigation and the courts before asking whether anything needs to change. That would be a mistake.
The safeguards surrounding living organ donation should be strong enough to withstand an investigation whether or not a particular suspect is eventually convicted.
The Federal Government’s transplantation guidelines provide a starting point. The relevant professional bodies, hospitals, regulators, courts and agencies responsible for identity management should now examine whether the procedures currently in place are capable of detecting deliberate manipulation.
A particularly sensitive area is the relationship between identity verification and medical consent.
Where a healthy person is surrendering an organ, institutions should be able to establish not merely that the donor has presented a valid-looking document, but that the person’s identity is consistent across the records that matter and that the consent process has not been compromised.
The same principle applies to the legal process.
An affidavit should remain a means of placing a sworn statement before the law. It should not become a convenient way of creating a documentary trail that conceals an individual’s real identity.
The case beyond the arrests
The four arrests announced in connection with the investigation may eventually lead to prosecutions. They may also lead investigators to other people.
For now, however, the more important story is the network itself and the conditions that could allow such a network to operate.
Illegal organ markets thrive where there is a shortage of legitimate organs, desperate patients, vulnerable potential donors and weak enforcement. They also depend on people who can connect those worlds.
That is why the alleged role of recruiters, lawyers, medical practitioners and other intermediaries must be examined separately rather than folded into one accusation.
The police have a responsibility to establish the facts.
The medical profession has a responsibility to protect patients and donors.
The legal profession has a responsibility to ensure that its processes are not knowingly abused.
The courts have a responsibility to maintain confidence in the integrity of their procedures.
And the institutions responsible for identity management have to make it difficult for one documentary change to disconnect a person from his existing records. None of those responsibilities can be discharged by assuming that another institution has already done the necessary checks.
The person behind the paperwork
There is a final reason to be cautious about reducing the case to affidavits and medical forms.
Every document in the investigation belongs to a person. A name on a birth certificate belongs to someone. An NIN belongs to someone. A consent form is signed by someone. A kidney is removed from someone’s body. The paperwork is supposed to connect those facts, not separate them.
If the police eventually prove that identities were deliberately altered to facilitate the removal and transfer of human organs, the crime will not have been committed only against a database or a legal process. It will have been committed against people whose vulnerability was allegedly converted into an opportunity for profit.
If the allegations are not established, the investigation will nevertheless have exposed questions that deserve answers about how Nigeria verifies identity and consent in one of medicine’s most sensitive fields.
For now, the evidence must be allowed to speak.
The police must follow the documents back to their source, the courts must test whatever evidence eventually emerges, and those accused must be given the full protection of due process.
But the institutions involved should not need a conviction to recognise the vulnerability the case has exposed. A document can establish what was written.
It cannot, on its own, establish the truth of the life behind it.
