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| Ike Ekweremadu, 60 (right), his wife Beatrice, 56, and Dr Obinna Obeta |
Ike Ekweremadu (a senior
Nigerian politician), his wife, and a doctor have been convicted of organ
trafficking, in the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.
Ike Ekweremadu, 60, a former
deputy president of the Nigerian senate, his wife, Beatrice, 56, and Dr Obinna
Obeta, 51, were found guilty of facilitating the travel of a young man to
Britain with a view to his exploitation after a six-week trial at the Old
Bailey.
They
criminally conspired to bring the 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to
exploit him for his kidney, the jury found.
The man, who cannot be named for
legal reasons, had been offered an illegal reward to become a donor for the
senator’s daughter after kidney disease forced her to drop out of a master’s
degree in film at Newcastle University, the court heard. Sonia Ekweremadu was
found not guilty.
In February 2022 the man
was falsely presented to a private renal unit at Royal Free hospital in London
as Sonia’s cousin in a failed attempt to persuade medics to carry out an
£80,000 transplant. For a fee, a medical secretary at the hospital acted as an
Igbo interpreter between the man and the doctors to help try to convince them
he was an altruistic donor, the court heard.
The prosecutor Hugh
Davies KC told the court the 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 behaviour of
Ekweremadu, a successful lawyer and founder of an anti-poverty charity who
helped draw up Nigeria’s laws against organ trafficking, showed “entitlement,
dishonesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told the jury.
He said Ekweremadu, who
owns several properties and had a staff of 80, “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”.
