Former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he never offered to pay money to a willing kidney donor to save his sick daughter, Sonia.
Since last year, Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and their 25-year-old daughter, Sonia have been on trial in London, on charges of alleged organ trafficking of a young man from Nigeria, who was said to have volunteered to serve as kidney donor.
The Ekweremadus were alleged to have taken the 21-year-old trader to London at the cost of £7,000 for the purpose of harvesting his organ towards donating it to Sonia, who they falsely presented as his cousin.
The lawyers for the defendant, Martin Hicks, in their opening addresses at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, stressed that they believed the donor was acting “altruistically.”
“Be alive please to the possible cultural differences between this country and that of Nigeria, particularly to altruistic donation.
“We say the issue in this case is simple – did there exist an agreement to exploit (the donor) in the way the prosecution allege and if so, who was a party to it?
“In Nigerian society, there is an expression ‘everyone is each other’s keeper’ and the altruistic donation of organs is not regarded there as such a rare event as it is in this country.
“He will also say he was told (the donor), he had offered to altruistically donate a kidney to Sonia.” Hicks told the judges.
According to Hicks, Ekweremadu did not attend any visits to the Royal Free Hospital in February, and March last year, concluding that the donor was unsuitable.
“In April 2022 and with the assistance of Diwe, he continued the family search for a suitable donor for his daughter Sonia and that search continues.
“We question whether (the donor) was exploited as suggested by the prosecution.” He affirmed.
Sonia’s lawyer, John Femi-Ola, speaking on her behalf, said, “She suffers from a very severe kidney disease. She receives dialysis treatment three days per week.”
“Each session is for four hours.
“The treatment is for the rest of her life unless there is a transplant in the future which now must be much in doubt given the publicity this case has attracted.”
Recall that Ekweremadu and his wife were arrested in June 2022 at the Heathrow Airport in London, and were immediately arraigned before a Magistrate’s Court for allegedly bringing a young man into the country to allegedly harvest his organs.
The Nigerian lawmaker has been in custody of the UK authorities since June 23, while his wife was granted bail by a criminal court in London.
Credit, except adjusted headline: THE NETWORK.
