Latest / DidiLawren / Ekweremadu Jailed In The UK For Organ Trafficking

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Ekweremadu Jailed In The UK For Organ Trafficking · DidiLawren

• 0:10
  Hello and welcome back to my channel.
• 0:11
  My name is Lorenzia Udifi and this is bands with Laurentia.
• 0:14
  How are you all doing? I hope you're doing great.
• 0:17
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  Now let us go straight into today's episode because I want
• 0:55
  to talk about April Madhu's sentencing.
• 0:58
  Now this has been in the news for a long time and finally he
• 1:03
  was sentenced a few days ago. Now a whole lot of Nigerians but
• 1:08
  the media, but the governments. But the people of Nigeria,
• 1:13
  they've been blaming the UK government.
• 1:15
  They said that the UK government they were hash on IKEA Koramado,
• 1:19
  the wife and doctor Obina Obeta, which is the doctor that
• 1:25
  actually facilitated the kidney. Purchase.
• 1:29
  I'll put it that way, because that was what it was.
• 1:33
  Now people were saying that if it was another nationality, that
• 1:37
  the British judiciary system would not have acted the way
• 1:40
  they did. They would not have convicted
• 1:43
  him in that human trafficking law.
• 1:46
  I don't even think people understand the gravity of what
• 1:50
  Ike Paremadu did as a senator, as a lawyer.
• 1:56
  As the Deputy Senate President, he created laws that kind of
• 2:03
  made it illegal for people to traffic people in Nigeria.
• 2:09
  Now in the UK that is a crime. Both in UK and in Nigeria it is
• 2:14
  a crime. But I think you get to certain
• 2:17
  level or certain political. Power that you think that you're
• 2:23
  above the law, even above the law that you have created, you
• 2:26
  have put in place now. Human trafficking has been a big
• 2:31
  issue both in Nigeria, in Africa and all around the world.
• 2:35
  You see a whole lot of people, especially poor people,
• 2:39
  especially people who don't have like means of livelihood, people
• 2:45
  who have one challenges or the other and they needed money to
• 2:49
  do certain things. They are happy to queue up to
• 2:52
  sell their kidneys, they are happy to sell whatever.
• 2:56
  Like in one African countries people are selling their toes,
• 3:00
  cutting of their toes, I don't even know.
• 3:03
  If it's for money, ritual, I don't even know.
• 3:06
  I don't know why, but people are selling their toes now.
• 3:13
  Yeah, toes. I have no idea how you want to
• 3:16
  transplant toes. Maybe they're using it for
• 3:19
  superstitious, whatever they're using it for.
• 3:21
  Growing up in Nigeria, growing up in Africa, I used to see a
• 3:24
  whole lot of people, dead people on the streets with parts of
• 3:28
  their body cut off. I will be like, oh, that is a
• 3:32
  ritualist. They are ritualist.
• 3:33
  But now I have kind of started having understanding that those
• 3:39
  are not ritual killings, but actually these are organ
• 3:43
  harvesters. This is a problem.
• 3:46
  This has been a problem. People are selling.
• 3:48
  Even in diaspora people are selling their kidneys, but in
• 3:52
  the UK they this is a crime and one thing you if you're in the
• 3:56
  UK you know that if they want to make an example of you then
• 4:02
  there is nothing that can help you.
• 4:04
  This is a problem worldwide and for the fact that UK has set the
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  precedence for people who think they can use a vulnerable.
• 4:16
  Adults or a child to harvest their organs and use them for
• 4:21
  whatever just because they are trying to get.
• 4:25
  Just because they have the means to do that, they are saying This
• 4:29
  is not OK in the case of Ek Koramado.
• 4:32
  If you're not familiar with the story, let me just give you a
• 4:36
  brief background. IKEA Karamadu is a deputy Senate
• 4:40
  President. He's been in the Senate for over
• 4:42
  20 years. He's a lawyer.
• 4:45
  He knows the law. In fact, he's in the House of
• 4:48
  Assembly that creates and pass these laws into power.
• 4:54
  Sonia had brothers, sisters, cousins, family member and none
• 5:00
  of these people could donate to Sonia because they know the
• 5:04
  implication of. Kidney donation.
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  Like you're going to be on medication for the rest of your
• 5:09
  life. If something happens to the
• 5:12
  other kidney, then you're done for it.
• 5:14
  Now they know these things. They know the implication, they
• 5:18
  know what it's going to take for maybe a family member to donate
• 5:23
  that kidney, and they don't want to bear that responsibility or
• 5:25
  take that risk. So they went out there to get a
• 5:29
  kidney donor. Now doctor obinal better who?
• 5:34
  Is the one that facilitated the whole thing.
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  He also had kidney problems and he purchased the kidney from the
• 5:42
  black market in Nigeria. He told them no problem because
• 5:46
  Opina and aquarium models younger brother went to medical
• 5:52
  school that was how the meds and kind of you know that trust and
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  connection was there doctor better.
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  Decided to use the people he used previously for his own to
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  get a kidney. They got this young man from
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  Nigeria, he was a a street trader or walking on the street
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  basically to make ends meet. When they got him, they told
• 6:12
  him, oh, you're going to be working for Senator Kay Cora
• 6:15
  model in one of his companies in the UK.
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  This young man was very happy about it.
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  I mean nobody, you're not going to tell anybody to go to the UK
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  and they're going to say no. So he was happy to go to the UK
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  now nobody told him like. Let's say they told him, let's
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  let's just say yes. They told him you were going to
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  harvest your kidney and we're going to pay you certain amount
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  of money or taking you to the UK will be the price we're paying.
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  Regardless, that is a transaction.
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  Now Nigerians don't want to understand this because
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  according to Nigerians, he was aware that they were going to
• 6:50
  harvest his kidney, but that was not the point.
• 6:53
  The point is this young man will earn about 3000.
• 6:57
  Naira per day, So if you're going to take him to the UK, you
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  don't know this man, you don't know he does not know a core
• 7:06
  model, he does not know the daughter.
• 7:08
  So there has to be an incentive, that is where the crime lies.
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  The incentive was taken him to the UK and then they had to lie
• 7:18
  on the documents that this young man is the cousin to Sonia.
• 7:23
  So the crack they knew what we were doing, they were doing from
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  the beginning because if they had said he was a strange donor
• 7:32
  or a stranger, they would have provided more proof.
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  But the fact that they said he was a cousin, that was #1
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  evidence of crime like. Lies.
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  And then took him to the UK with the whole forged documents,
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  affidavit and everything which Senator Ike Guaramado signed
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  with his letter, headed everything.
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  He approved it with the help of doctor or better.
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  Now they got those guys to the UK, took him to the hospital.
• 8:07
  Now, let me remind you that in Nigeria, nobody told him the
• 8:11
  implication of donating a kidney.
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  A lot of these people, they don't tell them.
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  They will just tell you, OK, you're donating a kidney and
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  we're paying you this amount of money.
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  And these people be like, OK, I have two kidneys, what do I have
• 8:23
  to lose? I'm just using just one kidney.
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  But the reality is that you're going to be on mitigation for
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  the rest of your life and that needs to be factored into that
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  cost and nobody. Talked about it like discussed
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  that with the young man. So when they go to the UK now
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  let's just disable everything. Let us agree that he was told
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  that they will be harvesting his kidney.
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  He was told that he was going to be paid about £7000 for one of
• 8:53
  his kidney. No problem.
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  Let us just agree that's OK. This young man accepted
• 8:58
  everything, which even at that level is a crime both in Nigeria
• 9:03
  and in the UK. But come follow me on this.
• 9:07
  Now they go to the UK. They took the young man to the
• 9:09
  hospital. At this point, Dr. Or better
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  has, you know, lied and cooked up story to coach everybody to
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  say that's okay, this is the cousin and all that.
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  Now if you know UK hospital, you know that different people are
• 9:24
  going to call you and counsel you.
• 9:25
  There are different stages, especially in a major operation
• 9:29
  like that. There are different stages that
• 9:31
  you're going to meet, different people who are going to talk to
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  you and then the doctors are going to sit down to explain the
• 9:37
  implication of everything, how everything is going to happen to
• 9:40
  you. This young man went to the
• 9:44
  hospital and. He went to the examination room,
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  they did a test, He was a match. But then they had to go through
• 9:51
  the steps of telling him what's going to happen to him and the
• 9:56
  lifelong implication of donating a kidney.
• 10:00
  This was when the penny dropped. Let's just agree that he
• 10:03
  accepted to donate the kidney in Nigeria.
• 10:07
  He accepted to be paid, which is a crime or.
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  But now they're telling him the implication of what will happen.
• 10:14
  If he actually donates that kidney and the Aqua models, they
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  never kind of. There was no plan for a long
• 10:23
  term treatment or long term medication that he will be
• 10:30
  taking after donating this kidney.
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  This young man at that point said he was not aware of any of
• 10:37
  the implication. If we're listening to every
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  other analysis saying that this young man was aware of
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  everything, but he was not aware of the implication of the kidney
• 10:49
  donation at that point. He was made aware and he
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  decided, you know, I don't know, all these things are going to
• 10:56
  happen to me just because I am donating a kidney to somebody I
• 10:59
  don't even know. He said he was not well of any
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  of the implication, both doctor or better already signed
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  documents and everything but and his consent saying that he was
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  aware of all these implication. At that point the hospital
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  stopped the donation, they cancelled it.
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  They informed the aquarium model and doctor better now.
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  They took this young woman home. They were now saying, OK, since
• 11:30
  you're not going to be able to do it here, let us take you back
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  to Nigeria. According to the the, the court
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  reports, somebody came to examine him and that
• 11:41
  examination, they were talking about taking him to Nigeria to
• 11:44
  still harvest our kidney in Nigeria.
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  Can you imagine that? They were still talking about
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  harvesting the kidney in Nigeria even after the UK hospital
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  stopped? That process, So they were
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  making plans to take him to Nigeria and still.
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  But at this point the the the young man already know the
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  implication of donating a kidney and he didn't want to go through
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  that. He ran away from the house
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  because of, According to him, the way they were treating him.
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  At this point he was rough sleeping for about two to three
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  days before somebody advised him to go to the police station.
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  He went to the police station, made the report and that was
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  when the police realized that this is organ trafficking, this
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  is against the law in the UK and we need to take this up now.
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  When the young man ran away, the aquarium model started their
• 12:42
  search for another kidney donor. They didn't even make any
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  efforts to search for him, to find him, or to do anything to
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  get him back. They did not do any of these
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  things. Instead, because they had the
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  money, they started searching for another organ to know.
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  Maybe they were thinking because when you have somebody that is
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  not educated, maybe they were thinking things were going to be
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  rough for him and he was going to come back to them begging for
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  whatever. On their way to Turkey to get
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  another donor. Now the system has been alerted
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  that OK, this is what the aquarium models are up to.
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  They were arrested at the airport and at that airport they
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  found £20,000 on them and the investigation started from
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  there. Their phones, they were seized
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  and everything, the documents, this was what was they went
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  through and they realized that they were also going to Turkey
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  to secure another kidney to purchase.
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  Another kidney. Like, I don't understand.
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  I don't understand. There are so many, like people
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  are saying that if you have a child that is sick, you would do
• 13:56
  anything for that child. I I, I don't understand it, but
• 14:01
  I can appreciate the fact that you would want to save your
• 14:05
  child, but you're putting another person's child in
• 14:09
  danger. You have children.
• 14:12
  IKEA for a mother and the wife, they had kids that could have
• 14:15
  been done us. They had cousins that could have
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  been done us. They had nieces, nephews,
• 14:23
  distant family members, workers. But they wanted to exploit a
• 14:28
  vulnerable person that does not know them, that they could
• 14:33
  easily discard, like you can understand the crime.
• 14:39
  Let me just play the video of the judgment so that you
• 14:43
  understand from the judge's perspective or from the court's
• 14:46
  perspective why he was jailed now.
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  Watch this. Senator Ek Ramadu, stand up,
• 14:53
  please. There are substantial
• 14:56
  aggravating features in your case.
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  You knew that the donor was vulnerable because of his young
• 15:04
  age and his poverty. You had a profound understanding
• 15:10
  of the impact of poverty because of the work you have done for
• 15:15
  the ECOA Foundation. You gave direct instructions to
• 15:20
  ensure that tight control was exercised oversea.
• 15:26
  Once the transplant did not go ahead, you immediately sought to
• 15:31
  find another person to be exploited in the same way.
• 15:36
  Rapidly managing to identify several potential candidates as
• 15:43
  against that you have your own ongoing health problems.
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  You have no previous convictions and were a person of good
• 15:53
  character. I accept Mr. Hicks Casey's
• 15:58
  description of you as having exceptionally positive good
• 16:03
  character. And that your conviction
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  represents a very substantial fall from grace.
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  You set up the ECOA Foundation and have funded that
• 16:16
  organization, which undertakes a very great deal of valuable
• 16:22
  charitable work to help those living in poverty in Nigeria.
• 16:28
  At trial. There was a great deal of
• 16:31
  character witness testimony. Including from Archbishop
• 16:36
  Emmanuel Chukwuma, the Archbishop for the Diocese of
• 16:40
  Anugu, I've been provided with a bundle of 51 pages of character
• 16:46
  statements for the purpose of sentencing.
• 16:50
  I have read all of them. They include statements from a
• 16:55
  former president of Nigeria, the current President of the Senate,
• 17:02
  the Bishop of Anugu. The Attorney General and the
• 17:06
  Chief Law Officer of Nigeria and the Speaker of the House of
• 17:11
  Representatives. That evidence speaks to your
• 17:15
  role in helping to establish and maintain democracy in Nigeria
• 17:21
  and also as an international peacemaker.
• 17:26
  The evidence also includes moving.
• 17:30
  Please advance by some of those. Who have benefited from your
• 17:34
  generosity and good works? And also a moving statement from
• 17:39
  your daughter Sonia. I take all of that into account.
• 17:45
  It amounts to substantial mitigation.
• 17:49
  You were motivated by the desdepair of your daughter's
• 17:53
  very serious illness, the weight to be attached to that factor.
• 17:59
  Is limited by reason of the fact that, as you recognized in your
• 18:03
  evidence, you could have sought A genuinely altruistic donation,
• 18:09
  including from a family member, albeit not Sonia's immediate
• 18:15
  siblings. After taking account of the
• 18:19
  aggravating and mitigating factors in your case, I impose a
• 18:24
  sentence of nine years and eight months imprisonment.
• 18:28
  Subject to allowing for the time which you have spent remanded in
• 18:31
  custody, you will serve 2/3 of the sentence in custody and will
• 18:36
  be in light on license thereafter for the rest of the
• 18:40
  sentence. I think this is the issue
• 18:42
  because the whole lot of people are saying, oh, I will do the
• 18:45
  same for my child, I will do the same for my child.
• 18:48
  If you're going to do the same for your child, how about
• 18:51
  somebody else? Are you considering the fact
• 18:54
  that you're paying somebody? £7000 to get a kidney that will
• 18:59
  save your daughter's life, but you're not even considering the
• 19:02
  after effect on that person because that person is not a
• 19:07
  human being to you. They're just like this is where
• 19:10
  the crime is, but a lot of people are not understanding
• 19:14
  that fact. I think the whole victim here is
• 19:18
  Sonia, their daughter she. Did not ask to be born into the
• 19:23
  Aquarium Madu's family. She did not ask for her parents
• 19:27
  to be wealthy politicians, corrupt politicians.
• 19:32
  She did not ask for that. She did not.
• 19:34
  Definitely did not ask for kidney problems.
• 19:38
  I pray that she gets the help that she needs.
• 19:42
  Ask for Senator Ek Aquarium Madu the wife and doctor.
• 19:46
  Better. They should face the full, you
• 19:49
  know, jail time. I don't even.
• 19:51
  Everyone to hear they were released for good behavior.
• 19:54
  They were released for like people are even writing to King
• 19:59
  Charles to get them released. Like I don't know, Nigerians.
• 20:04
  Nigerians will literally burn a personal life for stealing 1
• 20:09
  matchbox and then somebody that is dropping the country blind.
• 20:15
  They are so sympathetic. They are so sympathetic.
• 20:20
  I, I, I don't get it. But I hope that this serves as a
• 20:25
  deterrent for other Nigerian politicians who wants to toe the
• 20:29
  same line. You see a whole lot of
• 20:31
  politicians, they are going on medical tourism.
• 20:34
  They cannot even pay doctors, they are not paying nurses.
• 20:39
  They are not even putting anything in like the health
• 20:42
  budget. Is is a joke.
• 20:44
  But this is what somebody in within six months transferred
• 20:48
  £400,000 into an account within six months, Within six months,
• 20:54
  let that sink in. Anybody that is saying that you
• 20:58
  care for a man is a good man. He is this, he is that.
• 21:01
  He's a humanitarian. Let that sink in.
• 21:05
  That's all I have to say for today.
• 21:07
  Anyway, today's video is once again sponsored by the deputies
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  I would hook you up. Thank you very much for changing
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  this episode. Please like like like a chair.
• 21:23
  Thank you very much. Bye bye.