A London court has sentenced Nigeria’s former Deputy Speaker of Parliament Ike Ekweremadu to nine years and eight months and his wife to four years and six months in prison. The reason: They are said to have lured a young street vendor from Lagos to Great Britain under a pretext to have his kidney removed from him there. The organ was intended for her sick daughter.
The Ekweremadus thus committed “human trafficking across international borders”. In organ harvesting, according to Judge Jeremy Johnson, people and their bodies are nothing more than “commodities that can be bought and sold”. Ultimately, this is nothing more than “a form of slavery”. The couple was found guilty in March. With the announcement of the sentence on Friday, defendants in Great Britain were finally convicted under the “Modern Slavery Act” for the first time.
The “driving force” behind the plot was the 60-year-old politician, which is why his verdict was much harsher. He must spend at least two-thirds of the sentence behind bars. Johnson called the act a “disgusting trade” in which “the poverty, need and desperation” of vulnerable people had been exploited.
The family doctor who served as the go-between for the attempted organ harvesting was also sentenced to 10 years in prison. It should not have been the first time that the 51-year-old was involved in illegal organ trafficking. The medic was reported to have received a kidney himself in July 2021 from another man allegedly previously smuggled into the UK from Nigeria.
The couple lured the 21-year-old street vendor from Nigeria’s metropolis Lagos to London under false promises. The young man flew to England in February 2022 – he was assured that there was a job waiting for him. According to the BBC, he agreed to medical examinations in Lagos and London – but under the mistaken belief that these were necessary for a British visa in the wake of the corona pandemic.
In fact, he was supposed to act as an involuntary organ donor for the couple’s 25-year-old daughter – which he only found out about on site. The equivalent of almost 8,000 euros was offered to him for his organ. Kidney donation is not illegal in the UK, but paying someone to donate it is. He refused. “My body is not for sale,” the man later told the court. Two months later, the 21-year-old went to the police for fear that he would be tried again for a transplant when he returned to Nigeria.
The organ removal was to be carried out in a private ward at London’s Royal Free Hospital for the equivalent of around 90,000 euros. Fortunately for the victim, according to media reports, a doctor from the London clinic became suspicious – the hospital finally rejected the surgery in March 2022. However, that was presumably not the end of the matter: when their plan threatened to be exposed, the Ekweremadus looked around for a “replacement” in Turkey, according to the public prosecutor.
“I can’t think about going home to Nigeria,” said the 21-year-old victim after the sentencing. “These people are extremely powerful and I worry about my family.” The young man wanted to stay in Great Britain, but let the case rest – his family had asked him to do so.
On the other hand, the Nigerian Senate and the Economic Community of West African States had asked the judge to pardon Ekweremadu. As the news portal “Africanews” reports, Ekweremadu, a confidante of former President Goodluck Jonathan, was instrumental in 2014 in a law intended, among other things, to combat organ trafficking.
Sources: “Guardian”; “African News”; AP; BBC; AFP
