Nearly two years after publicly disclosing his battle with kidney failure, Nigerian music-video director ThankGod “TG” Omori has opened up about the full extent of the illness, including a failed transplant involving his younger brother and the moment he became unsure he would survive.
Omori made the revelations during a nearly two-hour interview on the Afropolitan Podcast, in which he recounted the medical ordeal that kept him away from the music video scene for an extended period.
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The director, popularly known as Boy Director, said he kept much of the illness private while receiving treatment and watching people speculate that his career had declined.
How it started
Omori said his kidney problems began when protein was detected in his urine. Doctors initially placed him on medication in the hope that his kidney function would improve.
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“It started in Nigeria, but it wasn’t serious. You know how it is with kidney function? It starts with, ‘Oh, there are proteins in your urine,’ and it’s nothing that serious. So they start your medications. They’re going to get it back to remission,” he said.
However, his condition deteriorated despite the medication.
“I was on that for like a year. I was chilling, but I was in contact with my doctors every day. It’s crazy that, with the medications, it just keeps going bad. Sometimes you’re out all day, then you come back, and your feet are swollen. It messes you up,” he said.
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While in New York in 2023, Omori became seriously ill and was taken to a hospital, where tests showed severely abnormal kidney-function results.
“I couldn’t even read the test. Everything that was there was just red, red, red,” he recalled.
According to him, doctors in the United States advised him to return to Nigeria because he lacked health insurance. He subsequently worked with doctors in London who reviewed samples and sent medication while he continued treatment in Lagos.
After about three months, he was introduced to a nephrologist in Nigeria, who began discussing the possibility of a transplant as his condition worsened and he stopped responding adequately to medication.
Omori said he eventually became so ill that he could no longer walk and spent another six months receiving treatment at a hospital in Ikoyi, Lagos.
‘I was fighting for my life’
While he remained in hospital, Omori said members of the public interpreted his absence from the music-video scene as evidence that his career had declined.
“People already text, ‘Oh, he fell off; he doesn’t shoot anymore, nobody works with him anymore, he has priced himself out of the market.’ I was fighting for my life. That’s how cruel the game is,” he said.
He said only a small circle of friends knew the severity of his condition. Among those who visited or regularly checked on him were Fireboy DML, Asake, Young Jonn, Rema, Zlatan and Victoria.
Nine-month search for a donor
Omori said finding a suitable kidney donor became another major challenge, with the search lasting about nine months.
“You can get somebody willing to, but it might not be a match. So I had to deal with, like, six or four people. Instead of us waiting, going back and forth, my brother was like, ‘You know what, let’s just cut the crap. Let’s do it,” he recounted.
The transplant was performed at St Nicholas Hospital in Lagos in August 2024. However, after an operation that lasted about seven hours, doctors informed him that the transplanted kidney was not functioning properly.
“They went in and came out, and you’re telling me my body is not accepting it,” Omori recalled.
Doctors returned him to the operating theatre to resolve the complication. He said he was later informed that there was no blood flow to the transplanted kidney and that it had to be removed.
“At this time, there was no flow. I was still awake. Now they’re telling me, ‘Sorry, there’s no flow. We have to take out that one because we can’t leave a kidney that is not functioning in you.’
“At that point, I lost everything, like my spirit. I wasn’t so sure I was going to come out of that one. In fact, I said my last prayer,” he said.
Last prayer
Omori said he eventually turned to social media to ask Nigerians to pray for him, despite having kept his illness private for almost three years.
“The prayer I said was like, ‘God, let your will be done.’ I didn’t even know what to say anymore. I had signed out,” he recalled.
He said he could not call his mother because he feared that hearing about his condition might cause her to have a heart attack. He described her as his “number one person” and a prayer warrior.
Following the failed transplant, Omori returned to dialysis while waiting to recover sufficiently to undergo another transplant.
He said the experience was particularly traumatic because his younger brother had undergone surgery and was left with one kidney despite the transplant’s failure.
“One piece, but you can live with one,” he said when asked about his brother’s kidney.
“That’s another angle that was actually very traumatising. It’s a very crazy story that I don’t even like to talk about. I would rather show it in a film.”
Industry support
Omori also recalled the overwhelming public response after his condition became known. He said he received about 200,000 messages and eventually deactivated his Instagram account and logged out of his phone because he could not cope with the volume.
“Don Jazzy, Olamide, Rema, Phyno, Falz, everybody came through for me,” he said.
He described the response as evidence of solidarity within Nigeria’s entertainment industry, despite rivalries and disagreements among some of its members.
In 2024, Omori disclosed that he was battling kidney failure and linked the deterioration of his health to the consumption of contaminated drinks, which he said left him hospitalised for much of 2023.
During the ordeal, he shared emotional messages online, including: “I don’t wanna die. Keep my spirit alive.”
His slimmer appearance following the health crisis has also attracted attention as he continues his recovery.
READ ALSO: Hospital, patient celebrate successful kidney transplant in Maiduguri
‘Directors not as rich as artistes’
Beyond his health, Omori discussed the economics of music video production and rejected the perception that directors automatically become wealthy by handling large production budgets.
“People think we’re as rich as an artiste,” he said, explaining that much of a video’s budget goes towards paying crew members, securing locations, hiring talent and meeting other production expenses.
“Sometimes the director goes home with nothing because he’s trying to make sure that his vision and his dreams come to life,” he added.
Omori also reflected on his celebrated creative partnership with Asake, describing their collaboration as a period when the singer’s music and his visuals appeared inseparable.
“It was like I was telling the story, he was making the music, but in one body,” he said.
Omori has directed music videos for several prominent Nigerian artistes, including Asake, Fireboy DML, Olamide, Burna Boy, Davido and Wizkid.
He said his experience with kidney failure changed his outlook on life and creativity. He now approaches every production with the mindset that it could be his last.
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