Influential Nigerian senator Ike Ekweremadu, former vice president of the country’s upper house, was sentenced on Friday to more than nine years in prison in London (great Britain) for wanting to take a kidney from a young man to transplant it into his daughter.

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Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice and Dr. Obinna Obeta, who acted as the “go-between”, was found guilty in March of taking Kingdom Union Nigerian youth who are less able to have a kidney removed.

The couple’s daughter, Sonia, 25, who was to receive the organs, was also on trial but acquitted.

Judge Jeremy Johnson, of London’s criminal court, criticized the politician on Friday for participating in a “despicable trade” that exploits the “poverty, misery and hopelessness” of vulnerable people, sentencing him to nine years and eight months in prison. . .

The event takes place between August 1, 2021 and May 5, 2022.

After traveling to London with the promise of £7,000 ($8,800) and the possibility of staying to live and work in Kingdom Unionthe victim, a 21-year-old street vendor from Lagos, realized he had been conned after undergoing a medical at a North West London hospital.

In May 2022, he resisted the intervention and fled to warn police “looking for someone to save his life,” he explained during his trial.

In March, Esther Richardson, head of the London police’s modern slavery unit, called the verdict “significant” and praised the victim’s courage in coming forward.

In the end, the transplant was not carried out and the Ekweremadu family was detained at London Heathrow Airport in June 2022. Since then, Ike Ekweremadu has risked fleeing his life. Kingdom Union.

The trial in London was followed with great interest in Nigeria, where the Ekweremadu family wields “power and influence”, according to the prosecution.

Ekweremadu remained officially a member of Parliament until the newly elected Senate took office at the start of the year.

A senator elected from Abuja in 2003 for the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), he was unable to stand in recent elections because he was detained before trial.

In a statement issued by police after the sentencing in March, prosecutor Joanne Jakymec criticized the defendants’ “total disregard for the welfare and health of victims” and their use of “grave influence” to try to get what they want. a victim who had only a “limited understanding of what really happened”, reported AFP.

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