A UK-based Nigerian doctor – Obinna Obeta, 50 – has been accused of conspiring with Sen. Ike Ekweremadu and his wife to traffic a homeless man into the UK for the purpose of harvesting his kidney for their daughter, a UK court heard Friday.
Obeta, from Southwark, south London, is charged under the Modern Slavery Act with arranging the travel of a 21-year-old man with a view to exploiting him between August last year and May this year.
Sixty-year-old Ike Ekweremadu – former deputy senate president of Nigeria – and his wife, Beatrice, 55, brought the 21-year-old man from Nigeria to the UK where they planned to remove his kidney so it could be given to their daughter, prosecutors alleged.
They also alleged the Ekweremadus treated him as a slave when he refused to consent to the procedure after undergoing tests at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead in north-west London, prompting him to escape. He then went to Staines Police Station in Surrey to make a report.
Odeta was arraigned at Bexley Magistrates’ Court on 13 July.
Prosecutor Tim Probert-Wood said previously that the case involved “exploitation and the harvesting of an organ.”
Obeta and the Ekweremadus are in custody and are due to appear at the Old Bailey on August 4.
