Senator and wife ‘plotted to harvest kidney for their daughter’

A Nigerian senator brought a market trader to the UK to harvest a kidney for his daughter, a court heard.

Ike Ekweremadu, 60, illegally transported the 21-year-old man to the UK along with his wife Beatrice, 56, and 25-year-old daughter Sonia, it was said.

Sonia suffers from a ‘significant and deteriorating kidney condition’ and requires dialysis until she receives a transplant.

They offered the victim 1.2m or 3.5m Naira, the equivalent of £2,400 or £7,000, plus the promise of work and the opportunity to be in the United Kingdom, jurors heard.

The victim, from Lagos in Nigeria, was brought to London in February 2022 and told to pretend to be Sonia’s cousin, it is claimed.

He was tested in Nigeria and found to be a match for Sonia before being brought to the UK.

He was at the time selling telephone parts from a cart in public markets for a low number of pounds a day.

From a remote Nigerian village, he does not know his own age, but is approximately 21.

Sonia was a patient at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where the victim was taken, since January 2020, the Old Bailey heard.

The family had reviewed other donors and tried to arrange a transplant operation in Turkey, the court heard.

Ike, Beatrice and Sonia, along with ‘middleman’ Dr Obinna Obeta, 51, all deny conspiracy to arrange the travel of another person with a view to exploitation.

Prosecutor Hugh Davies, KC, said: ‘In 2021 Ike Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice were significant figures in Nigerian society.

‘His status and influence had produced a significant degree of wealth. They had international connections.

‘There are however certain things that money and status cannot guarantee in any family, and they include good health.

‘Sonia Ekweremadu has a significant and deteriorating kidney condition called FFGS – focal segmental glomerulosclerosis.

‘It produces different adverse symptoms and in advanced stages may produce kidney failure.

‘When necessary management may be through dialysis. A longer term solution, sometimes effectively a cure, is a kidney transplant.

‘How to address this deteriorating condition was of course a matter of primary importance to both her and her family members.

‘Most parents, whether powerful or not in society, will do whatever is necessary to alleviate suffering in their child. The Ekweremadu’s were no different.

‘Those providing organs for reward are likely to come from the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society.

‘As such, the law must protect them from themselves, it must protect them for those with greater power who want their body parts.

‘In February 2022 the victim was transported to London but was throughout under the direction and financial control of the alleged conspirators.

‘The prosecution contends it is obvious that the conspirators were agreeing to reward any suitable donor in return for donating a kidney.

‘None of them (the donors) either knew or were related to Sonia. None of them would realistically have done it other than for some form of reward. Why would they?

‘Throughout the process elaborate steps were taken to create the wholly false impression that the victim and Sonia were cousins.

‘This deception extended to the formal documents used to obtain his temporary Visa for travel to the United Kingdom, and to coaching him with false answers to give to the Royal Free Hospital consultants.’

Ike’s brother, medical professional Isaac Ekweremadu, is also said to have been involved in the plot, but remains in Nigeria.

Ike, a former barrister, is a member of the centre-right Peoples Democratic Party and was the Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate for three consecutive terms, the equivalent of being Leader of the House of Commons in the UK.

He has been in the senate since 2003, and in 2021 led the Nigerian delegation at the COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021.

Ike and Beatrice, from Nigeria, Sonia, of Staverton Road, Willesden, and Obeta, of Hillbeck Close, Southwark, deny conspiracy to facilitate the travel of another person with a view to their exploitation.

The trial continues and is expected to last two months.
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