President Bola Tinubu has dispatched a high-level delegation to London to discuss the case of Ike Ekweremadu, the former deputy senate president who has been imprisoned in the United Kingdom since March 2023.
The delegation includes Yusuf Tuggar, minister of foreign affairs, and Lateef Fagbemi, attorney-general and minister of justice.
According to Alkasim Abdulkadir, spokesperson for Tuggar, the team arrived in London on Monday and met with officials from the UK Ministry of Justice. Abdulkadir said that the presidential delegation is consulting with British authorities to explore the possibility of Ekweremadu serving the remainder of his prison term in Nigeria.
Ike Ekweremadu and his wife, Beatrice, were arrested by the London Metropolitan Police in June 2022 after allegedly presenting a man to a private renal unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London as a cousin to their daughter, Sonia, in a failed attempt to carry out an £80,000 organ transplant.
The 21-year-old man, who claimed he was promised work in the UK, reported the incident to the police, stating that he was brought into the country for organ harvesting.
In March 2023, Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and Dr. Obinna Obeta were found guilty of organ trafficking under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act — the first conviction of its kind.
On May 5, 2023, Ekweremadu was sentenced to nine years and eight months in prison, his wife received four years and six months, while Obeta was handed a 10-year jail term.
Justice Jeremy Johnson ruled that Beatrice would serve half of her sentence in custody and the remainder on licence. She was released from prison in January 2025 and has since returned to Nigeria.
