A court in the United Kingdom convicted former Nigerian Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu to nine years and eight months in jail for an organ trafficking plan.
The court also condemned his wife, Beatrice, to four years and six months in prison, while Dr Obinna Obeta, the medical doctor who functioned as a’middleman’ in the scheme, was sentenced to ten years in prison and his medical license was suspended.
According to HowAfrica, the jury determined in March 2023 that they criminally plotted to bring a 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to abuse him for his kidney.
The young man was claimed to have falsely presented himself as Sonia’s cousin in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade doctors to perform an £80,000 private surgery at London’s Royal Free Hospital.
After renal problems led Sonia to drop out of a master’s degree in film at Newcastle University, the young guy was reported to have been offered an unlawful reward to become a donor for her.
Their conviction was the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.
“Entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”
The prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC, had told the court that Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man and other potential donors as “disposable assets – spare parts for reward”.
He said they entered an “emotionally cold commercial transaction” with the man, The Guardian UK report added.
The behaviour of Ekweremadu showed “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told the jury.
He said Ekweremadu “agreed to reward someone for a kidney for his daughter – somebody in circumstances of poverty and from whom he distanced himself and made no inquiries, and with whom, for his own political protection, he wanted no direct contact”.
Davies added, “What he agreed to do was not simply expedient in the clinical interests of his daughter, Sonia, it was exploitation, it was criminal. It is no defence to say he acted out of love for his daughter. Her clinical needs cannot come at the expense of the exploitation of somebody in poverty.”
On March 14, HowAfrica reported that Beatrice denied involvement in the search for an organ donor for their ailing daughter, Sonia.
HowAfrica also reported that Ekweremadu claimed he involved the young man after he was advised by his doctor against seeking a kidney donor from among his family members.