Nigeria’s ‘distinguished senator’ sent to prison in the UK. A lesson to our political class.

Something told me intuitively when the story broke last year that Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Nigeria’s former deputy senate president, his wife, Beatrice, as well as one Dr. Obinna Obeta, their consultant, would end up in jail over the organ harvesting plot that they were arraigned for in June, last year. The plot involved a 21-year-old young trader that was trafficked to the UK from Nigeria, with the aim of using his kidney for Sonia, daughter of the Ekweremadus who had kidney challenge and required regular dialysis. Ekweremadu the father was jailed nine years and eight months, his wife bagged four years and six months while the medical doctor got 10 years in prison. They were all found guilty of the crime in March and eventually sentenced at the UK’s Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey on May 5.

According to prosecutors, the victim was flown to the UK after he was offered about €7,000 (about N6.5million). He was also assured of getting a job in the UK. He was never told that he would have to give his kidney in return. But for the curiosity of a medical consultant who called off the planned transplant because of the suspicious circumstances surrounding it, the deal would have been done and the young man probably left in the lurch after, as there was nothing on ground to cater to his needs after the Ekweremadus must have got what they wanted. Justice Jeremy Johnson who sentenced them said “Ekweremadu was totally indifferent to aftercare for the victim.” The young man reported the matter to the police who took it up from there, culminating in the historic sentencing on May 5.

“This was an horrific plot to exploit a vulnerable victim by trafficking him to the UK for the purpose of transplanting his kidney,” Joanne Jakymec, Chief Crown Prosecutor, was quoted as saying.

It Is tragic that Ekweremadu, Nigeria’s former deputy senate president for 12 years, is the first person to be convicted under UK’s Modern Slavery Act, ironically by the slave masters themselves. Such was Ekweremadu’s fall from grace, to paraphrase Justice Johnson who sentenced him, that Det. Supt Andy Furphy, head of Metropolitan Police modern slavery team described the convictions as the “proudest moment in 25 years of policing.” Why won’t it, especially when a Nigerian big man is the guinea pig.

It Is similarly instructive that the case lasted for only about a year. In Nigeria, if the matter must get to court at all (that is if it is not treated as one of those spoils that the political elite are entitled to), it would drag on interminably. As a matter of fact, we would still be trying to ascertain whether the Ekweremadu involved is actually the former deputy senate president. After which lawyers would seek all manner of injunctions in order to frustrate justice. What I am saying is that justice in Nigeria is not blind as it should be; it can still see through the veil that covers the face of its symbol, especially where the high and mighty are involved.

But certain things should gladden the hearts of ordinary Nigerians in this matter. One is the fact that the judgment clearly demonstrates that all children are equal. This is a thing though that many of our political elites cannot stomach, even if they cannot say it in public. There are so many things they want to do privately which they would never want in the public. They think their own children are superior to other children, hence, they see the latter more as mere statistics that can be done away with whatever, whenever, however. Mere commodities that can be purchased, at best.

Secondly, we have seen how systems that work can easily demystify those we revere here in Nigeria. Ekweremadu was hitherto addressed with such flowery adjective as ‘distinguished’, a thing that he does not deserve if we check the dictionary for the actual meaning of the distinguished word. The judge made some other statements to this effect but I don’t want to go into such details so it won’t be an overkill. Mercifully, the owners of the English language that we abuse here without compunction, especially when the high and mighty are concerned, have given us the appropriate meaning of the word ‘distinguished’ by sending a ‘distinguished senator’ of the Federal Republic to prison.

If the word ‘distinguished’ were to be a living thing, it definitely would celebrate the judgment as one of the best things to happen to it. It would have been joined by its ‘friends’ like ‘His/Her Eminence’, ‘Royal Majesty’, ‘His Excellency’, etc. that are not eminent, majestic or excellent in the true sense of the words here. They are the real beneficiaries of the judgment.

Let me tell our political class more bad news. Some of them will still go the way of Ekweremadu. Ekweremadu had a whole of 12 years to positively impact healthcare in Nigeria but did little or nothing in that regard, apparently because he, like the others, can always jet out of the country for medical tourism. Please don’t tell me such crab as a tree does not make a forest. These people have a way of getting whatever number of trees to make a forest where their personal interests are concerned. Where there is the will, there will always be a way.

Nigeria is one of the countries that spend so much on its public functionaries, especially the law makers in the National Assembly who, aside what the law prescribes as their pay also award themselves all kinds of mouth-watering allowances and perks that you cannot find elsewhere. Indeed, once you have served in the public space in Nigeria, you want to become the liability of the Nigerian taxpayer till death do you part. So, people move from governor to senator, to minister and continue recycling themselves in those positions forever. It would not have been a problem if the taxpayer gets commensurate return for the investment.

This is a country where we have a sitting president who, as far back as the early 1980s complained bitterly in a coup speech that our hospitals were mere “consulting clinics”, but has done little to improve the state of those hospitals in his eight years in office. If we had medical experts to consult then, they are no longer there, having trooped out of the country in search of greener pastures. To rub salt on our injury, that president’s labour minister, unfortunately a medical doctor too, apparently taking advantage of our short memory, said the exodus was a blessing to the country because we would make money from their exit to other lands!

The truth of the matter is that it is easy for Nigerian public functionaries to run foul of the law anywhere. One, they are some of the most travelled in the world; they would always find cause to travel out. If they are not out to learn how to run local governments, they would be there to treat knee injury or to pick their teeth. In fact, travelling out has become not only routine but status symbol for them. ‘Awoof’, as they say, ‘no get bone’.

Moreover, our big people are not used to obeying laws. As far as they are concerned, laws are not meant for them. Even if they somehow get into trouble, they pick their phones and the matter dies naturally. It was the same mentality that drove Ekweremadu’s organ harvesting plot. Unfortunately, he forgot that UK is not Nigeria. Over there, the law is indeed no respecter of persons. Not even their own Very Important Personalities (VIPs).

Just imagine if what Ekweremadu tried to do in the UK happened in Nigeria. By now, the matter would have been swept under the carpet. And if it seems to be potentially messy, the young man at the centre of it all would have to find a way to take extra care of himself so that something would not do him; or so he just does not disappear without trace. But over there, he was given all the necessary care and protection needed. Even now, he seems scared of returning to Nigeria because of the possible consequence of making himself available as the vehicle through which a Nigerian big man became prisoner abroad, when, in actual fact, that big man is the architect of his own misfortune.

It was good that President Muhammadu Buhari did not succumb to the cheap blackmail to join the plea-for-leniency wagon as some of Ekweremadu’s colleagues and his kinsmen wanted. No rational human being that was following the case would ever make such plea. Just imagine the way the judge described a former senator of Nigeria! The truth is, beyond the show of concern for a fallen colleague, Nigeria’s political class must begin to think of how to make their own country work so that history would not repeat itself, and also to avoid the situation of the dead weeping for the dead (oku nsunkun oku, abarapa nsunkun ara won). They should be ashamed that ‘Japa’ syndrome is gaining traction in their time. Rather than continue to weep for Ekweremadu, they should weep for themselves because it may be turn by turn for them, henceforth. Nigerians were not running away from their country in the past. They only used to travel abroad to study or for leisure and not with the intention of bidding bye to their country forever due to bad leadership.

My empathy goes to the underdog in this matter. That was one of the things I learnt from the Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), that where the issue is between the big man and the poor, he would always find the law for the poor. Even in this matter, as had been made clear from the judgment on Ekweremadu, anyone with conscience does not have any choice but to pitch one’s tent with the young man, not just because he is the underdog but because his poverty would have been exploited by the same Ekweremadu who once had the opportunity to make laws for the betterment of his life.

I don’t have issues with parents concerned about their daughter having kidney problem and trying to get her out of it. That is what true and responsible parenting is all about. But I have issues with the crude and inhuman system adopted by the Ekweremadus. So insensitive; highly inconsiderate. It was all about ‘me, me’, ‘our daughter, our daughter’. They did not care a hoot about the victim. As if their own child has two heads.

The former deputy senate president is a lawyer; he should know the appropriate process to get a consenting transplant donor for his daughter. Jakymec put it better: “The convicted defendants showed utter disregard for the victim’s welfare, health and well-being and used their considerable influence to a high degree of control throughout, with the victim having limited understanding of what was really going on here”. Justice Johnson even observed that the former deputy senate president was a senator when the upper legislative house passed the bill proscribing the crime he committed.

The fact is; these foreign countries know much about what is happening in Nigeria and if they are now serving our big people the comeuppance for their actions, it should not surprise us. They may actually become the ultimate nemesis that God would be using either to change the minds of our political elite for good, or to send them to prison. People who have turned this country to the hell that it has become do not deserve to be roaming the streets free, not to talk of flaunting their largely ill-gotten wealth. They should be kept like the hungry lions that they are, in decorated cages abroad. After all, the prisons over there are far better than what the political class call correctional centres here in Nigeria, in Africa. (The Nation)

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