TG Omori Recounts Nine Month Search for Kidney Donor, Failed Transplant, Fears for His Survival
Nigerian music video director and cinematographer, ThankGod Omori, better known as TG Omori, has given a detailed account of his battle with kidney failure, revealing how a transplant using his brother’s kidney failed and how his family had to start the search for a donor all over again.
Omori spoke on the Afropolitan Podcast, which aired on YouTube on Wednesday. He said his troubles began when protein was detected in his urine.
He took medication for about a year, but his condition worsened in 2023, when he fell ill while in New York and was taken to hospital. Doctors there advised him to return to Nigeria, where a nephrologist eventually recommended a kidney transplant after his kidney function kept declining despite treatment.
Finding a compatible donor proved to be another ordeal. Omori said the search lasted about nine months, with several willing donors ruled out over compatibility issues, before his only brother volunteered. The operation lasted about seven hours, but doctors soon found that his body was not accepting the new kidney. The organ had to be removed, and he went back on dialysis to recover before another attempt could be made. He said that at the point of the failed surgery he was not sure he would survive and had said his last prayer.
The director said his brother’s sacrifice weighed on him. Although a person can live with one kidney, Omori described it as traumatising that his brother is now left with a single kidney after a transplant that did not work. After the failed surgery, his family spent another six months looking for a second donor, and a match was eventually found, leading to a successful transplant. Omori first spoke publicly about his kidney failure and transplant in 2024, when he shared a photo from his hospital bed.
Omori also spoke about the toll the illness took on his career. He said he was hospitalised for months and away from work while rumours spread online that he had fallen off and that nobody wanted to work with him.
According to him, only a few close friends in the industry knew what he was going through, and being unable to create during his recovery hit him as hard as the physical pain.
