Nigerian Senator Ike Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice Nwanneka Ekweremadu were arrested in London on Tuesday and charged with planning to bring a 15-year-old boy into the United Kingdom so they could harvest his organs.
Ekweremadu, 60, is a member of Nigeria’s opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and has been a senator since 2003. He was deputy president of the Nigerian Senate from 2007 to 2019 and is also a lawyer and a visiting professor at the University of Lincoln.
According to court testimony, the Ekweremadus have family in London, but they responded “Nigeria” when asked for their home address.
“Visiting professors are often, as is in this case, non-resident at the university, unpaid and advisory,” a spokesman for the University of Lincoln explained to the BBC. “We are deeply concerned about the nature of these allegations but as this is an active police investigation, we cannot comment further at this stage.”
The couple was taken into custody on Tuesday at Heathrow airport as they prepared to board a flight to Turkey. They have been under investigation since last month when British police were alerted to possible offenses against anti-slavery legislation.
The offense apparently involved bringing a homeless 15-year-old boy into the U.K. for the purposes of harvesting his organs. The boy is reportedly in protective custody.
The Vanguard of Nigeria on Friday claimed that the prospective victim of the organ-harvesting scheme was in his 20s, not 15. Witnesses said the victim and his older brothers were known for selling phone accessories out of handcarts in the Ikotun market of Nigeria’s Lagos state.
The Ekweremadus declined comment to the media, but they denied all of the allegations against them in court. Their legal representatives argued that their “blameless life” of public service and “unblemished record” made the charges of human trafficking and organ harvesting “nothing short of preposterous.”
“Organ harvesting is a massive problem in Nigeria itself. This is the first prosecution in the UK that I’m aware of,” Debbie Ariyo of London-based charity Africans Unite Against Child Abuse told the UK Guardian on Thursday.