By Akinwale Kasali
Sonia, the 25 year old daughter of former Deputy Senate President, Dr Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Dr Beatrice Ekweremadu, says that her life has been turned upside down.
Her parents were on Friday, 5th May, sentenced to jail terms by Old Bailey Court United Kingdom. While Senator Ike Ekweremadu was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, his wife was sentenced to six years, and a London-based Nigerian-born doctor, Obinna Obeta, an accomplice to the crime they committed, was slammed with a 10-year jail term and his licence as a medical doctor withdrawn.
The Ekweremadus were arrested in June, 2022 at the London Heathrow Airport, on arrival from Turkey. Their crime was getting involved with human organ trafficking. They transported a 21-year old Lagos Street trader to London for the sole purpose of harvesting one of his kidneys for the benefit of their daughter, Sonia, who is suffering from a severe kidney disease, and was waiting for a kidney transplant from a donor.
In an interview with the BBC after her parents’ sentencing, Sonia, who was also arrested for same crime, but was discharged and acquitted by the Jury which found her parents guilty, when asked of the lesson learnt from the family’s ordeal said: “Life is just so dynamic. Like one day you are in your house chilling, the next day, your whole life is turned upside down. For me, it will never be the same.”
Trouble began for the Ekweremadus when the 21-year old would-have-been donor, who claimed that he was unaware of why he was brought to London, but was promised a job, a good life, and the sum seven thousand Pounds Sterling, was rejected by a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital when he was taken there. The doctor rejected him on the grounds that he was too young, did not know what he came for, and the implications therein, especially, the after-care.
When he got back to Dr Obeta’s house where he was kept, he said everybody’s attitude towards him changed. He claimed that they began to maltreat him, which forced him to run away. He slept on the streets for three nights, and went to the Police to report his situation and asked to be saved. Dr Obeta was the middle man in the “procurement” of the donor.
Asked how she felt about the donor whose report to the Police sent her parents to jail, Sonia said: “I wish him well.”
Near tears as she spoke with her interviewer, she said she felt guilty over her parents’ ordeal.
Her words: “I feel guilty because I feel all this happened because of me.”
The donor said in a statement which was read in Court that he feared for his life because the people he got entangled with are powerful people. He said he does not wish to go back to Nigeria because of his fear for his life as his father had come under tremendous pressure to ask him to drop the case. He also rejected money from the Ekweremadus for legal compensation and said they are “bad people”, and tye money will be cursed if he took it.
