{"id":103110,"date":"2023-02-09T18:35:59","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T17:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=103110"},"modified":"2023-02-09T18:35:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T17:35:59","slug":"uk-court-ekweremadu-denies-offering-money-to-buy-kidney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/news\/uk-court-ekweremadu-denies-offering-money-to-buy-kidney\/","title":{"rendered":"UK COURT: \u00a0EKWEREMADU DENIES OFFERING MONEY TO BUY KIDNEY\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he never offered to pay money to a willing kidney donor to save his sick daughter, Sonia.<\/p>\n

Since last year, Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and their 25-year-old daughter, Sonia have been on trial in London, on charges of alleged organ trafficking of a young man from Nigeria, who was said to have volunteered to serve as kidney donor.<\/p>\n

The Ekweremadus were alleged to have taken the 21-year-old trader to London at the cost of \u00a37,000 for the purpose of harvesting his organ towards donating it to Sonia, who they falsely presented as his cousin.<\/p>\n

The lawyers for the defendant, Martin Hicks, in their opening addresses at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, stressed that they believed the donor was acting \u201caltruistically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBe alive please to the possible cultural differences between this country and that of Nigeria, particularly to altruistic donation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say the issue in this case is simple \u2013 did there exist an agreement to exploit (the donor) in the way the prosecution allege and if so, who was a party to it?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Nigerian society, there is an expression \u2018everyone is each other\u2019s keeper\u2019 and the altruistic donation of organs is not regarded there as such a rare event as it is in this country.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe will also say he was told (the donor), he had offered to altruistically donate a kidney to Sonia.\u201d Hicks told the judges.<\/p>\n

According to Hicks, Ekweremadu did not attend any visits to the Royal Free Hospital in February, and March last year, concluding that the donor was unsuitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn April 2022 and with the assistance of Diwe, he continued the family search for a suitable donor for his daughter Sonia and that search continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe question whether (the donor) was exploited as suggested by the prosecution.\u201d He affirmed.<\/p>\n

Sonia lawyer, John Femi-Ola, speaking on her behalf, said, \u201cShe suffers from a very severe kidney disease. She receives dialysis treatment three days per week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEach session is for four hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe treatment is for the rest of her life unless there is a transplant in the future which now must be much in doubt given the publicity this case has attracted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recall that Ekweremadu and his wife were arrested in June 2022 at the Heathrow Airport in London, and were immediately arraigned before a Magistrate\u2019s Court for allegedly bringing a young man into the country to allegedly harvest his organs.<\/p>\n

The Nigerian lawmaker has been in custody of the UK authorities since June 23, while his wife was granted bail by a criminal court in London.<\/p>\n

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Former deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he never offered to pay money to a willing kidney donor to save his sick daughter, Sonia. Since last year,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nUK COURT: \u00a0EKWEREMADU DENIES OFFERING MONEY TO BUY KIDNEY\u00a0 - Pointblank News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/news\/uk-court-ekweremadu-denies-offering-money-to-buy-kidney\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"UK COURT: \u00a0EKWEREMADU DENIES OFFERING MONEY TO BUY KIDNEY\u00a0 - Pointblank News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he never offered to pay money to a willing kidney donor to save his sick daughter, Sonia. 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