By Kamil Opeyemi
Former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu; his wife, Beatrice; and their doctor, Obinna Obeta will be sentenced on May 5.
This followed their conviction for organ trafficking on Thursday in the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.
Ekweremadu, 60; 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.
However, the lawmaker’s daughter, Sonia, was cleared by the court.
The jury said Ekweremadu, his wife and their doctor criminally conspired to bring the 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to exploit him for his kidney.
The prosecutor Hugh Davies KC told the court the Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man and other potential donours as “disposable assets – spare parts for reward”. He said they entered an “emotionally cold commercial transaction” with the man.
The behaviour of Ekweremadu 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”.
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 defence 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 denied the charge, told the court he was the victim of a scam. Obeta, who also denied the charge, claimed the man was not offered a reward for his kidney and was acting altruistically. Beatrice denied any knowledge of the alleged conspiracy. Sonia did not give evidence.
The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, will pass sentence on May 5.
Ekweremadu had been in custody since June 23, last year. His wife, who was arrested with him, was granted bail by a criminal court in London, shortly after their arrest.
Nwamini, a street trader from Lagos, was taken to the UK last year to provide a kidney to Sonia in an £80,000 private transplant at the Royal Free Hospital in Camden, North London.
He claimed he was told to pretend to be Sonia’s cousin to get the transplant approved.
But a consultant working in the NHS hospital refused to remove the vital organ, having become suspicious because the volunteer kidney donor appeared initially ignorant of his mission.
Nwamini reportedly told police investigators he had no idea his kidney was to be removed until he was taken to the Royal Free to meet the surgeon.
He ran away, sleeping on the street for about three days, before walking into the Staines Police Station on May 5, 2022.