The incarceration of Ekweremadu over the allegation of organ trafficking was not just the punishment to the family alone but a mockery of Nigeria’s sovereignty with a grave deterrence and consequence
By Kunle Alaye
The Ekweremadus were arrested by the London Metropolitan Police in June 2022. Over allegation of organ trafficking.
The former deputy senate president, has been sentenced to nine years and eight months in prison for the purported crime.
The family was alleged to have attempted to convince doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London, United Kingdom to perform an £80,000 transplant on the donor who was presented as the cousin of their daughter Sonia.
During the trial, Hugh Davies, told the court that “Ekweremadus and other potential donors as disposable assets-spare parts for reward.”
Sequel to the development, a couple of personalities and different civil right organisations have started reacting to such unfortunate circumstance. Including the senate, house of representatives, international Human Rights Commission (IHRC) as well as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),
The parliament, also asked the UK court to “temper justice with mercy and consider valuable contributions made by the lawmakers in Nigeria and West Africa.
Also, between the conviction and sentencing period, notable personalities around the world including former president Olusegun Obasanjo and Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairperson Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), appealed to the UK government to be lenient with the Ekweremadus.
Despite all the intervention of actors, the jail term was pronounced as Mr and Mrs Ekweremadu were both jailed. Whilst Mr Ekweremadu was jailed for 10 years, his wife earned herself 4 years. Sequel the stipulated punishment for the supposedly committed crime.
However, much as I do not want to encourage a crime at any level, I could not have equally imagine the extent at which the “SOVEREIGNTY” of Nigerian State was subversively encroached and exigously undermined by the the British government.
The French Jurist (Jean Bodin) conceptualised SOVEREIGNTY as the supremacy or freedom of a country from external control, dominance or manipulations. This in order words implies that no country reserves the right to spite or arrogantly subvert the integrity of another.
There is also a diplomatic immunity in international relations which of course guides or limit any capital punishment on specific crimes. My arguments:
That Ekweremadu is a former deputy president of the Federal Republic Nigeria, at such the case should have been strictly handled in a more diplomatic trend.
That Nigerian government was not apparently sensitive to such a very condescending precedence it has caused itself. Especially in furtherance to the country’s sovereign supremacy among other nations of the world.
That could Nigerian government have reserved such a sovereign equanimity to put any British national on trial in any competent court of the country with a more odious crime even more than the “organ trafficking” which, of course, has apparently earned the former Nigerian deputy senate president approximately a 10 – year imprisonment in the United Kingdom.
That Nigerian government may be embarrassed with a more ridiculous treatment by the British government or any other western world in future. If it allows this current situation to go just like that.
That the development goes beyond the embattled former deputy senate president but the integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, among its other committee of nations in international Relations.
I conclude by saying that the incarceration of Ekweremadu over the allegation of organ trafficking was not just the punishment to the family alone but a mockery of Nigeria’s sovereignty with a grave deterrence and consequence.
Kunle Alaye (PhD).
Department of Political Science, Chrisland University Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria.
