“Who Owns Your Kidney? You do. But, perhaps, ownership is not even the most important point. The deeper principle is that your body is not a commodity simply because somebody is willing to pay for it.”
There are some questions whose answers appear too obvious to require asking.
Who owns the kidney
Who owns your house? You do.
Who owns the money in your bank account? You do.
But who owns your kidney?
Again, the answer should be obvious. You do.
And yet, recent allegations surrounding the removal of kidneys from young Nigerians raise a disturbing question: what happens when poverty, deception, medical power and the demand for human organs converge?
That is where this stops being merely a story about kidneys. It becomes a story about human dignity.
The Allegations
In late August, the Nigeria Police Force announced the arrest of four suspects allegedly linked to an organ-harvesting and human-trafficking operation in Nasarawa State.
The suspects included two nephrologists associated with Wellington Clinics, Life Camp, Abuja.
According to the police, a 22-year-old man, Samuel Ezekiel, was taken to Wellington Clinics on 24 April 2026, where his kidney was allegedly removed.
The police said investigations indicated that documents, including identification and consent documents, had allegedly been falsified.
Ezekiel himself has recounted how he allegedly ended up at the hospital. He said his friend initially told him they were going to a hospital.
After preliminary medical tests, he was told that his kidney did not match the first intended recipient.
He alleged that he was subsequently informed that another recipient had been found and that his identity would be changed.
An affidavit was prepared at the Federal High Court. He then went to Wellington Clinics, where he signed documents before undergoing surgery.
He alleged that he was paid in dollars shortly before the operation but handed the money to the friend who recruited him—who allegedly spent part of it on mobile phones and other items.
These are grave allegations. But they remain allegations. The accused are entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence.
Wellington Clinics has denied participating in, facilitating or benefiting from any financial arrangement connected with the transplant.
The hospital says it relied on documents presented by the donor and specialist team.
It has also suspended renal transplant services pending the outcome.
Those facts matter. But so does the larger legal question.
If a person signs a consent form, does that make the removal of his kidney lawful?
The answer is no—not necessarily.
The Law Is Already There
Nigeria is not without legal protection against the exploitation of human organs.
Section 20 of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act 2015 specifically criminalises conduct connected with organ harvesting.
It covers recruiting or transporting a person for organ removal through deception, coercion, abuse of power or vulnerability, or through payments or benefits intended to obtain that person’s consent.
Section 20(2) goes further, criminalising procuring, offering, assisting or otherwise being involved in the removal, buying or selling of human organs.
The prescribed punishment is a minimum of seven years’ imprisonment and a fine of, at least, ₦5 million.
The law therefore looks beyond the operating theatre. It reaches recruiters, intermediaries, document handlers—anyone who knowingly facilitates the transaction.
But there is another important protection.
Section 48 of the National Health Act 2014 provides that tissue, blood or blood products cannot ordinarily be removed from a living person except with informed consent, in the prescribed manner.
It also expressly prohibits removal for merchandise, sale or commercial purposes.
This is a crucial distinction. Kidney transplantation is legitimate medicine. The commercial exploitation of a human being for his kidney is something else entirely.
Consent Is More Than A Signature
This is where the law meets morality.
Imagine a desperately poor young man being offered a large sum of money for one of his kidneys. He signs. He is not physically dragged into the hospital. He appears to agree. Is that the end of the legal inquiry?
It should not be.
The concept of informed consent exists precisely because medical consent is not supposed to be a ceremonial signature. A patient must understand what is being done to his body. His decision must be voluntary.
And where the circumstances indicate deception, coercion or exploitation, the fact that a document was signed cannot simply settle the matter.
Indeed, Section 20 of the Trafficking in Persons Act expressly recognises vulnerability and payments or benefits intended to obtain consent as relevant circumstances in organ-trafficking offences.
That is a powerful legislative statement. It tells us that a person’s vulnerability can be exploited without a gun being pointed at his head.
Your Body Is Not A Marketplace
Poverty does not automatically deprive an adult of the capacity to make decisions about his body.
But poverty can create an environment in which apparent choice becomes dangerously vulnerable to exploitation.
There is a difference between choosing and being presented with an apparently irresistible choice because somebody knows that you are desperate.
That distinction becomes even more important when the decision is irreversible. A kidney is not a shirt that can be returned. Once removed, it is gone.
That is why the Nigerian Constitution matters here. Section 34(1) provides that every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person and prohibits torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, slavery and servitude.
The constitutional language does not specifically mention kidneys. It does not need to. The larger principle is that a human being cannot be reduced to the commercial value of a part of his body.
Hospitals Cannot Afford To Look Only At Paperwork
The present controversy also raises a difficult question: what level of due diligence should a transplant facility undertake before permitting a living-donor transplant?
The National Health Act does not treat transplantation as an ordinary clinical procedure.
Section 51 requires transplantation involving tissue from a living person to another living person to take place in an authorised hospital and provides for written medical authority and an independent tissue transplantation committee.
Nigeria has subsequently gone further.
In March 2025, the Federal Government launched the Standards and Guidelines for Establishing and Coordinating Organ/Tissue Transplantation Services in Nigeria, intended to promote ethical, transparent and accountable transplantation.
The framework requires informed consent from donors and recipients, facility certification and prohibits commercialisation.
That means the modern regulatory question cannot simply be: “Did the donor sign?” It must also be: Who is the donor? Is his identity independently verified? Who introduced him to the recipient?
What is the relationship between them? Has money changed hands? Has the donor been independently assessed for coercion or exploitation? And where something does not look right, is somebody empowered—and willing—to stop the procedure?
These are not unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles. They are safeguards against the possibility that the person most vulnerable in the room may be the person whose body is about to be permanently altered.
Nigeria Now Needs Enforcement, Not Another Declaration
The government’s 2025 transplantation guidelines were an important step. But a guideline sitting in a file cannot protect a kidney donor. The real test is implementation.
Nigeria needs a transplantation system in which every living donor is traceable, every transplant centre is properly certified, documentation can be independently verified, donor-recipient relationships are scrutinised and suspicious financial arrangements trigger investigation before surgery—not after.
Regulators, hospitals, professional bodies and law-enforcement agencies must work together. The issue is too important for each institution to assume that somebody else is checking.
Protect Legitimate Transplantation
We must not allow the horror of alleged organ trafficking to undermine confidence in legitimate transplantation. Kidney transplantation saves lives.
Ethical donors deserve protection. Patients suffering from kidney failure deserve access to safe and lawful transplantation.
Doctors practising within the law deserve a regulatory environment in which legitimate medicine is not confused with criminal exploitation.
The answer is therefore not to discourage organ donation. It is to make Nigerians confident that when they donate, the system will protect them.
So, Who Owns Your Kidney?
You do.
But perhaps ownership is not even the most important point. The deeper principle is that your body is not a commodity simply because somebody is willing to pay for it.
A poor Nigerian does not possess fewer bodily rights than a wealthy Nigerian. Desperation must never become an invitation to exploit the human body.
The police investigation must be allowed to run its course. Those accused must receive due process.
Anyone found to have exploited vulnerable Nigerians must face the full consequences of the law.
But whatever the outcome, Nigeria should take the warning seriously. Because the most important question is not what happens after a kidney has been removed. It is what happens before.
Who checks the donor? Who checks the documents? Who checks the money? Who checks the consent? Who protects the vulnerable person who has entered the operating theatre believing that he is making a choice?
That is where human dignity begins. And perhaps that is the simplest way to put the matter:
A human organ may be transplantable. A human being must never become tradable.
•Sanu is a Nigerian lawyer and health law scholar. This column breaks down complex health laws for everyday Nigerians.
