Former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, 63, who is serving a nine-year and eight-month sentence for organ trafficking in the UK, will not be deported to Nigeria.
According to The Guardian UK on Monday, the British Government rejected a request from Nigeria to transfer the jailed politician.
Persecondnews recalls that Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and Dr. Obinna Obeta were all convicted in 2023 of conspiring to exploit a young Nigerian man for his kidney.
The kidney was intended for their daughter, Sonia, in a private London hospital.
The conviction was the first under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act for Organ Trafficking.
Nigeria’s delegation, led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, had last week met with officials at the UK Ministry of Justice to request Ekweremadu’s transfer home to serve the remainder of his sentence.
However, The Guardian quoted a Ministry of Justice source as saying the request was rejected over concerns that Nigeria could not guarantee Ekweremadu would continue serving his sentence after return.
The UK government, according to the report, said it could not comment on specific prisoners but stressed that any transfer “is at our discretion following a careful assessment of whether it would be in the interests of justice.”
Another UK government source told the paper that “the UK will not tolerate modern slavery and any offender will face the full force of UK law.”
Beatrice Ekweremadu, who was sentenced to four years and six months, has since been released after serving half of her term and is back in Nigeria.
During sentencing, Justice Jeremy Johnson described the trio’s actions as part of a “despicable trade.”
He said: “The harvesting of human organs is a form of slavery. It treats human beings and their bodies as commodities to be bought and sold.”
He called Ekweremadu the “driving force” behind the plot, noting that the case marked a “substantial fall from grace.”
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