A United Kingdom court, on Friday, sentenced Nigeria’s former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, to nine years and eight months in prison for an organ trafficking plot.
Ekweremadu’s wife, Beatrice, was also jailed four years and 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 also suspended by the same UK court.
Recall that in March 2023, the jury found that the convicted persons criminally conspired to bring a 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to exploit him for his kidney.
The young man was said to have been falsely presented as Sonia Ekweremadu’s cousin in a failed bid to persuade doctors to carry out an £80,000 private procedure at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
The young man was said to have been offered an illegal reward to become a donor for Sonia after kidney disease forced her to drop out of a master’s degree in film at Newcastle University.
Ekweremadus and the doctor’s conviction was the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.
Details later…