PHOTO: Ekweremadu and Prince Charles III when things were rosy

An old picture of Nigeria’s embattled former deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu and Prince Charles III of the United Kingdom having a good time together has surfaced online.

Ekweremadu and Prince Charles were seen in the picture sharing a happy moment with a glass of wine.

Though, the picture has forced many to wonder why the Prince with his royal influence never bothered to assist his friend (Ike Ekweremadu) who was recently sentenced to 9 years imprisonment for organ trafficking by a UK court.

The court also sentenced his wife, Beatrice, to four years six months while the medical doctor who acted as a ‘middleman’ in the plot, Dr Obinna Obeta, was sentenced to 10 years and his medical licence was also suspended.

News Band reports in March 2023 that the jury found they criminally conspired to bring a 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to exploit him for his kidney.

The young man was said to have been falsely presented as Sonia’s cousin in a failed bid to persuade doctors to carry out an £80,000 private procedure at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

The young man was said to have been offered an illegal reward to become a donor for Sonia after kidney disease forced her to drop out of a master’s degree in film at Newcastle University.

Their conviction was the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.

“Entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”
The prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC, had told the court that Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man and other potential donors as “disposable assets – spare parts for reward”.

He said they entered an “emotionally cold commercial transaction” with the man, The Guardian UK report added.

The behaviour of Ekweremadu showed “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told the jury.

He said Ekweremadu “agreed to reward someone for a kidney for his daughter – somebody in circumstances of poverty and from whom he distanced himself and made no inquiries, and with whom, for his own political protection, he wanted no direct contact”.

Davies added, “What he agreed to do was not simply expedient in the clinical interests of his daughter, Sonia, it was exploitation, it was criminal. It is no defence to say he acted out of love for his daughter. Her clinical needs cannot come at the expense of the exploitation of somebody in poverty.”