Kidnappers No Longer Want Ransom — They Now Want Your Organs in Africa?

The terrifying reports emerging from Nigeria are leaving families afraid to travel, sleep, or even survive captivity.

A Group of Abducted Students and a Teacher in Kidnappers Camp — Photo extracted from X formally Twitter

The first question asked of a new recruit in a kidnapper’s camp deep in the Nigerian forest is no longer for ransom.

It is: "Do you smoke?"

And depending on the answer, the choice of life or death may have already been made for that person.

Kidnapping according to recent research is now one of the growing industry in Nigeria.

The industry had been a ruthless yet predictable business for years. Abductors took victims. Families sold land, borrowed money, asked relatives to loan them money and tried everything they could to get them out. Ransom was paid, and people would return home from time to time.

That is a grim transaction that is changing.

In disturbing accounts shared by survivors and those with first-hand information on these criminal networks, a new and more terrifying motive is entering the picture. It is reported that victims are no longer being held for financial ransoms.

These sources say some are being murdered in order to harvest their organs.

The logic, if there is any, is, to say the least, shocking.

According to reports, kidnappers known to be involved in organ trafficking are believed to evaluate the physical condition of each victim immediately after abduction. Those who smoke heavily or use hard drugs are reportedly considered less valuable. The reasoning is that their organs are already damaged or compromised.

The ones that are thought to be "healthy" are considered more profitable.

Not for ransom, but for harvest.

All of these circulating accounts may not be independently verifiable but one thing is certain. Nigerians are talking about this, and they are talking carefully, quietly and with the special horror of those who don't know what escaping captivity means.

The kidnapping crisis in Nigeria is already taking a toll on people before the organ trafficking rumors.

Farmers are afraid to go to their own farms. Students are kidnapped at school. People vanish in broad daylight from the streets and highways. Fleets of families have been traumatised so often that the negotiations over ransom are now a routine, dreadful cost of living in some corners of the country.

Mothers cry themselves to sleep not realizing whether their children are breathing.

Husbands and wives sell land, livestock and all the property they have to pay ransom for family members who sometimes never come back. Children are raised without their parents. Parents grow old without answers. Some victims come back physically, but the sounds, the darkness, the questions they were asked, and what they meant, remain with them forever in the camps.

Others never come back at all.

This is no longer simply a crime story.

This is what happens when the day-to-day condition of life is perpetually and inevitably a state of fear. When tourists travel with fear as their companion. When parents get scared every school time. No road, no hour, no location is safe enough to cross unless it is carefully calculated.

A society that allegedly evaluates human beings for the market value of their organs is a society in crisis that requires more than headlines.

It requires the serious and persistent attention of government, security institutions and all those who have a voice loud enough to be heard.

Nigeria is an exceptionally resilient country. It's people have been suffering pressures that can crush smaller societies and yet they are still standing.

But resilience is not a substitute for safety.

No population should be expected to be resilient enough to withstand being hunted.

When travelling in or through Nigeria, be aware. Don't walk on uninhabited or deserted roads. Let family know at all times where you are going. Stay out of the dark while traveling; try to do so during the day where possible. Be security conscious — not paralysed by fear, but fully conscious.

People outside Nigeria, please don’t turn your backs — As a tourist, I won’t.

These are no statistics.

These are farmers. Students. Passengers. Parents. Human beings whose lives are being dismantled by a security failure of enormous, and ever increasing scale, which is accompanied by poverty and violence.

May Nigeria never get to the point of selling human lives like commodities.

And may the quiet day of silence be broken.