By Our Correspondent
A former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, who is being detained with his wife by the London Metropolitan Police, had applied for a visa for the alleged donor of kidney for his daughter at the British High Commission in Abuja, a letter has shown.
The New Citizen had reported earlier that the Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court in London today ordered that Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice should be kept in police custody over charges that they took a 15-year-old Nigerian boy to the UK in order to harvest his kidney for their sick daughter.
However, as the court order was given, a letter emerged purporting to show that the serving senator had written to the High Commission on December 28, 2021, in support of “the visa application made by Mr. Ukpo Nwamini David who is currently having medical investigations for a kidney donation to Ms. Sonia Ekweremadu”.
The senator told the embassy that “David and Sonia will be at the Royal Free Hospital London, and I will be providing the necessary funding. I have enclosed a statement of my bank account.”
Findings by New Citizen showed that the daughter is a 2019 graduate of a UK university who had been diagnosed with kidney problems and has been on dialysis for some time.
However, while the letter did not provide details about the alleged donor, our correspondent reports that Ekweremadu is being tried for allegedly using a minor as a donor and not because he did not inform the embassy about the trip.
The prosecution has told the court that the couple took Ukpo Nwamini David, a homeless boy from Nigeria, to the UK under the pretext of exposing him to a better life but with the intention of harvesting his kidney.
According to the charge sheet, Ekweremadu and his wife allegedly procured a passport for the victim that showed his age as 21-years-old, but doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in the UK were forced to cancel the procedure when the boy disclosed his real age to be 15 years.
A police investigation was lauched after detectives were alerted to potential offences under modern slavery legislation in May 2022.
The court turned down the defendants’ application for bail and ordered their detention by the police until July 7 when the hearing would resume.
