From governorship hopeful to UK prison, timeline of Ekweremadu's tortuous year

It's no longer news that former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has been handed nine years and eight months prison term in a landmark conviction in the United Kingdom.

Ekweremadu who alongside his wife, Beatrice and a doctor, Obinna Obeta, was caught in a botched organ transplant plot, was tried under the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act.

The five-term Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmaker has represented the Enugu West senatorial district in the Red Chamber since 2003.

Here's a timeline of how Ekweremadu went from nearly clinching a governorship ticket to becoming a convict for organ trafficking in the UK within a year.

In the build-up to party primaries for the 2023 general elections, the lawmaker joined the contest for the PDP ticket for the Enugu State governorship election, having earlier announced that he won't be vying to retain his senatorial seat.

But in a twist of events, Ekweremadu announced his withdrawal from the race on the day of the primary election. His decision was conveyed in a statement issued by Charles Ogbo Asogwa, the Director-General of his campaign organisation on May 25, 2023.

Though he didn't provide any reason for his withdrawal, political watchers attributed it to the zoning formula in the state which was not in his favour as well as the decision of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to back another aspirant in the election.

While that may have dealt a huge political blow to the senator, it was nothing compared to the events that followed.

On June 23, 2022, news broke that Ekweremadu and his wife have been arrested by the Specialist Crime Team of the Metropolitan Police. The senator and his wife were transiting to Turkey when the police accosted and arrested them at Heathrow airport two days earlier.

They appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on the same day to answer to charges bordering on conspiracy to arrange the travel of a child into the UK in order to harvest organs and the judge rejected their bail request.

Further details later revealed that the Ekweremadus had conspired with Dr Obeta to bring a Lagos street trader identified as David Nwamini to the United Kingdom in a plot to harvest his kidney for use by the couple's ailing daughter, Sonia.

This was how the news of Sonia's health condition, which she later described as Nephrotic syndrome - a kind of kidney disorder that makes the body pass too much protein in the urine - became public.

This seemed to have swayed opinions as some Nigerians pledged solidarity to the senator including his colleagues in the upper legislative chamber who during plenary on June 29, 2022, vowed to send a delegation to visit him in the UK prison.

There was a brief respite for the Ekweremadu family when the Old Bailey judge, Richard Marks, granted Beatrice bail under "some fairly stringent conditions" on July 22 but her husband was kept in prison over fears that he may flee the UK if granted bail.

Ekweremadu appeared again in court on August 4 and was told that he would remain in prison till October 31 when the hearing was billed to commence.

As the British authorities dug in with their investigations, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) struck from Nigeria. The anti-graft body secured an interim forfeiture of 40 landed properties linked to the former Deputy Senate President.

The landed properties comprise 15 in Abuja, 10 in Enugu (Ekweremadu’s home state), one in Lagos, two in the United Kingdom, three in the United States, and nine in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

This had a far-reaching effect as the UK court turned down Ekweremadu's umpteenth bail application on December 21, 2022, citing the letter and assets forfeiture proceedings against him by the EFCC.

The lawmaker was then confined to custody until the commencement of the hearing which had been adjourned to January 31, 2023.

After a six-week trial at the Old Bailey, Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and Obeta were found guilty of organ harvesting offences on Thursday, March 23, 2023.

The senator alongside his accomplices was sentenced on Friday, May 5, 2023, to wrap up an interesting year.