A senior Nigerian politician was on trial in London on Tuesday for allegedly exploiting a street trader by transporting him to the U.K. to donate a kidney in exchange for thousands of pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ike Ekweremadu, who was deputy president of the Nigerian Senate and a lawyer, was on trial along with his wife, Beatrice Ekweremadu, and their 25-year-old daughter Sonia at London\u2019s Central Criminal Court. They deny conspiring to arrange or facilitate the travel of the young man with a view to exploitation between August 2021 and May 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutors allege Ekweremadu and his family recruited a 21-year-old man at a Lagos street market to be a kidney donor for Sonia Ekweremadu in a private transplant operation at a London hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opening the trial on Monday, prosecutor Hugh Davies said Ike Ekweremadu and his wife were powerful figures in Nigerian society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the 21-year-old man believed he was being taken to London for work, and that under the agreement the man would be paid thousands of pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kidney donations are lawful in the U.K. but it is a criminal offense to reward someone for doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The donor was transported to London in February 2022, Davies said, adding that as part of the ruse the man was purported to be Sonia\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe prosecution contends that (the donor) was subject to a high degree of control throughout and was dependent on what he was told for his understanding,\u201d Davies told jurors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The organ transplant didn\u2019t go ahead and Sonia Ekweremadu remains on dialysis treatment. The trial is ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A senior Nigerian politician was on trial in London on Tuesday for allegedly exploiting a street trader by transporting him to the U.K. to donate a kidney in exchange for thousands of pounds. Ike Ekweremadu, who was deputy president of the Nigerian Senate and a lawyer, was on trial along with his wife, Beatrice Ekweremadu, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,12],"tags":[11264,9503,8470,10507,2808,2117,10873,5455,9127,6825,9504,8469,6698,10776,3684,10742,5549,9036,3805,11167,8501,8468,11325,7465,10695,6584,8206,11581,12605,10415,594,5140],"class_list":["post-29533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-fitness","category-world-news","tag-allegations","tag-beatice-ekweremau","tag-beatrice-ekweremadu","tag-court","tag-daughter","tag-davies","tag-dependent","tag-family","tag-february","tag-hospital","tag-hugh-davies","tag-ike-ekweremadu","tag-lagos","tag-lawyer","tag-london","tag-market","tag-nigerian","tag-pounds","tag-president","tag-prosecution","tag-senate","tag-sonia-ekweremadu","tag-street","tag-sued","tag-transplant","tag-travel","tag-treatment","tag-trial","tag-uk","tag-work","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}