An affluent Nigerian politician, his wife, and a doctor were sentenced to jail on Friday for illegally transporting a street trader from Lagos to Britain to harvest his kidney for their critically ill daughter.
Ike Ekweremadu was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for illegal organ harvesting, while his wife Beatrice, 56, was sentenced to four and a half years.
Obinna Obeta, a 51-year-old Nigerian doctor characterized as a middleman by the CPS, was sentenced to ten years in jail. The three were found guilty in March of arranging for a man’s travel to be organized so that his organs could be taken.
Earlier this week, Nigerian Senate President Ahmad Lawan said that he had written to British legal authorities begging for pardon for Ekweremadu, an opposition senator and former deputy president of the senate.
He mentioned that it was the first time our colleague had done anything like this. According to prosecutors, the couple enticed the man to come to Britain in February 2022 with the promise of a job and a few thousand pounds in return for his organ.
When he learned someone was trying to sell his kidney to a transplant patient, the victim, who made his living in Lagos’s market selling telephone components, reported the incident to the police.
They tried to pass off the donor, who was about 21 but cannot be recognized for legal reasons, as their daughter’s cousin, but a physician at London’s Royal Free Hospital became suspicious and the transplant was never completed.
Sonia Ekweremadu, the intended receiver, whose renal condition is bad and deteriorating and who requires dialysis, was found not guilty.
