Former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, is at risk of being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in line with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 of the United Kingdom after a London court found him and his wife, Beatrice, guilty of organ trafficking.
Sonia, the 25-year-old daughter of former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, burst into tears after her parents were convicted by a British court. However, the lawmaker’s daughter, Sonia, was cleared by the court.
The 60-year-old senator, his 56-year-old spouse Beatrice and Dr. Obinna Obeta, 51, were convicted of conspiring to exploit David Nwamini.
The prosecutor Hugh Davies KC told the court that Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man and other potential donors 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.”
The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, will pass sentence on May 5.
