The United Kingdom has rejected Nigeria’s request to transfer Ike Ekweremadu, the former Deputy Senate President, back to Nigeria to complete his prison sentence.
Ekweremadu is serving a nine-year, eight-month sentence in a UK prison after being convicted in 2023 for conspiring to traffic a young man to London to harvest his kidney.
Earlier this month, President Bola Tinubu sent a delegation to London in a bid to negotiate Ekweremadu’s return.
The team included Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Lateef Fagbemi, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
They held talks with officials in the UK’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ), seeking either a deportation for Ekweremadu or a review of his sentence on “humanitarian and legal grounds.”
A source within the MoJ told The Guardian that the UK government refused the request because it was “concerned that Nigeria could offer no guarantees that Ekweremadu would continue his prison sentence after being deported.”
The source added: “Any prisoner transfer is at our discretion following a careful assessment of whether it would be in the interests of justice. The UK will not tolerate modern slavery and any offender will face the full force of UK law.”
Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and a UK-based doctor, Dr Obinna Obeta, were found guilty for their roles in a scheme that saw a young Nigerian man trafficked to London under the pretense of being a relative, in order to donate a kidney.
During sentencing, Mr Justice Johnson described the operation as “a despicable trade.”
In his words, “The harvesting of human organs is a form of slavery. It treats human beings and their bodies as commodities to be bought and sold.”
The judge also called Ekweremadu the “driving force” behind the plot and said his conviction marked “a very substantial fall from grace.”
Beatrice Ekweremadu was sentenced to four years and six months, but served only half her term in custody. She was released earlier this year and has since returned to Nigeria.
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