A wealthy Nigerian politician, his wife, and a medical middleman were jailed by a London court on Friday for trafficking a street trader from Lagos to Britain to illegally harvest his kidney for a transplant for their seriously ill daughter.
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Ike Ekweremadu had been sentenced to nine years and eight months in Britain’s first illegal organ-harvesting prosecution. His wife Beatrice, 56, was sentenced to four years and six months, while Nigerian doctor Obinna Obeta was jailed for 10 years.
All three were convicted in March of conspiring to arrange the travel of a man in order to harvest his organs.
The Nigerian senator who was found guilty of trafficking a man to Britain to harvest one of his kidneys, will be sentenced later today.
Ike Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice planned to give the organ to their daughter who has a kidney disease.https://t.co/Qhhce2QJlj pic.twitter.com/X3QwZna7ou
— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) May 5, 2023
Defending their own
President of the Nigerian Senate Ahmad Lawan said earlier in the week he had written to the British judicial authorities seeking clemency for Ekweremadu, an opposition senator and former deputy president of Nigeria’s senate, on behalf of the Senate.
Nigerian Senator found guilty of trafficking man to U.K. to provide kidney: report
Senior Nigerian politician Ike Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and a medical middleman Obinna Obeta, have been found guilty of trafficking a man to…
see more
He said, “it was the first time our colleague has gotten involved in this kind of thing.”
Truth comes to light
Prosecutors said the couple had brought the man to Britain in February last year with the offer of a few thousand pounds for his organ and the promise of work in Britain.
The case came to light when the man, who had made a living in Lagos selling telephone parts in a market, went to the police saying he had been trafficked and someone was trying to harvest his kidney.
The proposed transplant never went ahead as a consultant at London’s Royal Free Hospital became suspicious about the circumstances surrounding the proposed donor, aged about 21 who cannot be named for legal reasons, who the family had tried to pass off as their daughter’s cousin.
Sonia Ekweremadu, the intended recipient of the organ who has a serious and deteriorating kidney condition and requires dialysis, was found not guilty.