Ekweremadu Goes to Jail

Following an organ harvesting scandal, Ike Ekeweremadu, Beatrice Ekweremadu and a doctor, Obinna Obeta, have become the first people convicted under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act.

Written by Yusuf Omotayo

May 8, 2023

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Following a six-week trial, on Friday 05 May 2023, Justice Jeremy Johnson of the Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court convicted former deputy Senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice Ekweremadu and, Obinna Obeta, a doctor. All three were found guilty of an organ harvesting conspiracy in what has been described as a landmark case.

Court documents revealed that the trio were involved in a plot to harvest the organ of a 21-year-old man who was brought from Nigeria to Britain for the Ekweremadus’ daughter, Sonia, who had kidney disease. The victim, later identified as David Nwamini, who was offered an illegal reward was presented to a private renal unit at Royal Free Hospital in London as Sonia’s cousin.

In June 2022, Ekweremadu, his wife and the doctor were arrested with the prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC, arguing that Ekweremadu and the doctor treated the victim and other potential donors as ‘disposable assets – spare parts for reward’. He said Ekweremadu,

…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.

‘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 trio – Ekweremadu, Beatrice and Obeta – were found culpable of violating the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, and the case marks the first time anyone has been found guilty under this law. While Sonia was cleared of all charges, the former senator, his wife and his doctor were all found guilty in March 2023.

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