UK court jails Nigerian senator for nine years for kidney-harvesting plot

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Does being wealthy a guarantee for illegal activities and going scores free? A wealthy Nigerian senator who is Lord in Nigeria has been sentenced to a nine year jail term.

It has been months of investigations since the UK law enforcement agency were informed of an illegal transplant of a trader's kidney to wealthy Nigerian senator whose daughter had kidney issues.

The UK court handling the case have sentenced Senator Ike Ekweremadu, his wife and a doctor for tricking a trader in Lagos, Nigeria to be trafficked to the UK.

Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Ike Ekweremadu had been sentenced to nine years and eight months in Britain's first illegal organ-harvesting prosecution, while his wife Beatrice, 56, was sentenced to four years and six months.

Nigerian doctor Obinna Obeta, 51 - described by prosecutors as a middle man - was jailed for 10 years, the CPS said. All three were convicted in March of conspiring to arrange the travel of a man in order to harvest his organs.

A week ago, the Nigerian Senate President Ahmed Lawal said he wrote to the British government to show clemency for his colleague Senator Ike Ekweremadu and pleaded that his colleague had not committed such crime before.

For a distinguish Senate President to plead on behalf of a criminal just shows the nature of the Nigerian government and how corruption and inequality have eaten deep into the Nigerian fabric. It isn't a proven fact but I think this might have not been his first attempt, although he was caught in the incident.

To me, this is the right step to the right direction in terms of proving to wealthy African leaders that there are societies that have a working legal system. Kudos to the British judiciary.

Prosecutors said the couple had brought the man to Britain in February last year with the offer of a few thousand pounds for his organ and the promise of work in Britain.

The case came to light when the man, who had made a living in Lagos selling telephone parts in a market, went to police saying he had been trafficked and someone was trying to harvest his kidney.

The proposed transplant never went ahead as a consultant at London's Royal Free hospital became suspicious about the circumstances surrounding the proposed donor, aged about 21 who cannot be named for legal reasons, who the family had tried to pass off as their daughter's cousin.

The UK court didn't find Sofia the would-be recipient of the kidney not guilty of any crime.