A UK court on Friday sentenced former deputy president of the Nigerian Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, to 9 years and 8 months jail term for committing an organ trafficking plot.
The verdict is the first of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.
Mr Justice Johnson told Mr. Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice Ekweremadu:
“People-trafficking of human organs is a form of slavery. “It treats human beings and their body parts as commodities to be bought and sold. “It is a trade that preys on poverty, misery and desperation.”
WesternLifeNewsNG recalls that Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice and lawyer, Obeta were convicted of conspiracy to arrange the travel of a young Nigerian man who was identified as David Nwamini to Britain in order to exploit him for his kidney.
The organ was needed for Ekweremadu’s sick daughter, Sonia.
The court also sentenced his wife, Beatrice, to four years six months while the medical doctor who acted as a ‘middleman’ in the plot, Dr Obinna Obeta, was sentenced to 10 years and his medical licence was also suspended.
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”.
Hugh Davies added that the behaviour of Ekweremadu showed “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”.
According to Davies, 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”.
“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”, the prosecutor told the jury.
