The British government has declined Nigeria’s proposal to transfer former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, back to Nigeria to finish his prison sentence. Ekweremadu is currently serving a 9-year, 8-month term in the UK following his 2023 conviction for organ-trafficking, specifically conspiring to traffic a young man’s kidney for transplant.
According to sources within the UK Ministry of Justice, officials rejected the transfer request due to serious doubts that Nigeria could guarantee he would serve out the remainder of his sentence in accordance with British law.
A UK government spokesperson emphasized that decisions on prisoner transfers depend on a “careful assessment of whether it would be in the interests of justice.” Another official warned that Britain would not tolerate modern slavery and insisted that offenders must face the full consequences of their crimes.
The Nigerian delegation, led by Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar, had traveled to London last week to negotiate for Ekweremadu’s return. But in the end, British authorities determined that the conditions for a transfer were not satisfactorily met.
Ekweremadu’s wife, Beatrice, who was sentenced alongside him to 4 years and 6 months, has since been released and returned to Nigeria.
At his sentencing, Justice Jeremy Johnson condemned the plot as a “despicable trade,” arguing that treating people as organs-to-be harvested reduces human lives to commodities. He also described Ekweremadu as the “driving force” behind the conspiracy, marking a dramatic fall from grace for the once-high-ranking lawmaker.
With the UK’s rejection, any near-term hope of Ekweremadu serving his sentence in Nigeria is extinguished: he will now complete his full term in a British prison.
