Organ trafficking in Nigeria

Organ Harvesting in Nigeria

The Problem of Human Trafficking and Organ Harvesting:

According to estimates from the United Nations and other reliable international sources as well as Nigerian experts in the field of human rights, approximately two million human beings are exploited by human traffickers every year globally (Osita, 2003). Generally, that exploitation takes the form of the sales of women and children in connection with sexual services in which the adult victims are tricked into voluntarily taking employment offers in foreign communities or foreign countries and of children sold by their parents to human traffickers (Osita, 2003).

In recent years, organ harvesting has also become a significant problem, particularly within impoverished communities like Nigeria where financial desperation motivates people to agree to submit to unnecessary surgery wherein their essential organs (such as kidneys or portions of their livers) are removed by physicians for the purpose of selling them on the donor-organ-for-transplant market. In addition to the tremendous economic inequality and financial desperation that leads people in Nigeria to sell their organs for nominal fees, the fact that they are almost always much less educated than those who approach them for such purposes and convince them that the risks are worth taking is also one of the principal reasons that such exploitation is possible.

Compounding the problem and the (already high) medical risks to the donors is the fact that organ donation in this fashion is illegal in Nigeria and, therefore, the medical practitioners who perform many of these procedures are unlicensed or licensed but performing the procedures in makeshift facilities to avoid detection by authorities and arrest.

Understanding the Problem of Enforcement and Prevention:

One of the most significant problems inhibiting enforcement in Nigeria and other impoverished areas with active tourist industries is the tremendous financial disparity between tourists from Western society and the wealthier countries in the Middle East and Far East (Osita, 2003). That dynamic has, in fact, given rise to an entire industry of medical tourism wherein ailing individuals from the United States, Japan, and Saudi Arabia (for just several examples of many) travel to Nigeria or hire intermediaries to so on their behalf for the express purpose of obtaining organs for transplantation at a very small fraction of the cost of their value.

The motivation on the part of the exploited Nigerian nationals is simply to receive a few thousand (or even a few hundred) dollars, which represent much larger value in impoverished areas than those amounts of money do to the purchasers. On the part of the prospective purchasers, money is less often the issue because the main obstacle to receiving organs for transplant in more developed countries is the fundamental limitation on the source of such organs (Osita, 2003). Most developed countries have strict laws prohibiting the sale for profit of human organs and therefore, the main source of donor organs are cadavers who are typically accident victims.

While this explains the demand, the factors responsible for the ready supply of human organs in Nigeria (and other similar communities) is simply that public corruption has become epidemic and systemic within the local government and regulatory agencies responsible for enforcing human rights laws. In Nigeria, even the women rescued from forced sexual slavery situation are subjected to abuse while supposedly in the safe custody of the authorities.