In the first conviction for organ trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act in the United Kingdom, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and their doctor Obinna Obeta will be jailed on May 5.
After a six-week trial at the Old Bailey, the former deputy senate president, his wife Beatrice, 56, and Dr. Obinna Obeta, 51, were found guilty of enabling a young man’s visit to Britain with the intention of exploiting him.
The jury concluded that they had planned to use the young street vendor from Lagos, age 21, as a pawn in order to obtain his kidney.
The senator’s daughter’s kidney illness prompted her to withdraw from a master’s programme in cinema at Newcastle University, the court heard, and the man had been given a prise to become a donor for the senator’s daughter.
The young man attempted to convince doctors to perform a $80,000 kidney transplant back in February 2022 by posing as Sonia’s cousin at a private renal unit at London’s Royal Free hospital. The guy attempted to persuade the physicians that he was an altruistic donor by paying a medical secretary at the hospital to serve as an Igbo translator between them, the court heard.
Ekweremadus and Obeta, according to the prosecutor Hugh Davies KC, treated the man and other potential donors like “disposable assets – spare parts for reward.” He claimed that they engaged in a “business transaction with the man that was emotionally frigid.”
Successful attorney and anti-poverty organisation founder Ekweremadu, who worked on Nigeria’s legislation against organ trafficking, exhibited behaviour that Davies described as “entitlement, dishonesty, and hypocrisy,” he 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”.
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 defense 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.”
Ekweremadu, who refuted the accusation, said in court that he was a victim of fraud. The man was not given a reward for his kidney, according to Obeta, who also refuted the accusation, and he was acting out of altruism.
Beatrice vehemently denied knowing anything about the purported conspiracy. Sonia didn’t offer any testimony.
Obeta charged Ekweremadu roughly £8,000 in total, made up of a “agent fee” and a “donation fee,” according to WhatsApp texts shown before the court.
Ekweremadu and Obeta acknowledged misrepresenting the man’s relationship to Sonia in both his visa application and the paperwork he provided to the hospital.
Davies said Ekweremadu ignored medical advice to find a donor for his daughter among genuine family members. He said: “At no point in time was there ever any intention for a family member close, medium or distant to do what could be paid for from a pool of donors.”
On May 5, the judge, Mr. Justice Jeremy Johnson, will issue a ruling.
