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Organ Harvesting: Obasanjo Writes UK Court, Pleads For Ekweremadu(Full Texts)-Eaglesightnews
Eagle’s Sight News has gathered from the Punch news that Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has written to the United Kingdom court that found former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice, guilty of organ trafficking.
In the letter addressed to the Chief Clerk, the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, in London, the former President asked the Clerk to intervene and ensure the UK government tempered justice with mercy on the matter.
The PUNCH reports that Ekweremadu is at risk of being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in line with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 of the United Kingdom after a London court found him and his wife guilty of organ trafficking.
Read the full letter below:
My dear Chief Clerk, may I seize this opportunity to commend your utmost dedication and resourcefulness which you have demonstrated with rare qualities of commitment and courage, while also upholding the cherished traditions of the Public Service.
I am Olusegun Obasanjo, a soldier commissioned into the British Army of the West African Frontier Force in 1958, and rose to the rank of a full General in the Nigerian Army. I received the surrender of the Biafran Army at the end of the Nigerian civil war. I was military Head of State from 1976 to 1979 and elected President from 1999 to 2007.
It is with great pleasure that I write in respect of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who I have known for over two decades. Within this period, I have followed and watched, with keen interest, Ike Ekweremadu’s inspiring career which traversed private legal practice and public administration. I recall, with fond memories, the beginnings of our political and social relationship at the outset of our collective quest for democratic rebirth for our fatherland. During my administration as a democratically-elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007, Ike Ekweremadu and I had close relationship and interactions as staunch members of our political party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and more so as he got elected into the Senate of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria in 2003, of which he has since remained a member till date.
Within this period of his service in the Nigerian Parliament, he has served as Deputy Senate President of the Senate and has headed so many Committees in various capacities and brought to bear his broad-based experience in legal practice and public administration. Sometime in 2009, he was appointed as the First Deputy Speaker of the Economic Community of West African States,
ECOWAS, and made to lead ad hoc Committee to work for the return of constitutional order in the Niger Republic.
I clearly remember that in the heady days of the keen contest for the presidential ticket of our Party in early 1999, he joined other well-meaning Nigerians from the South-Eastern part of Nigeria to set aside extraneous considerations and ensured that South East unanimously adopted me for the Presidency. This was without regard to the fact that my closest competitor hailed from their part of the country.
I truly cherish his God-fearing, dispassionate, moderate and pan-Nigerian approach to national issues and developments, in our multi-ethnic, multi-religious geo-polity. He dedicates himself to the service of God and humanity and he continues to play visible roles in national development.
Through the Ikeoha Foundation, a non-governmental organization founded by him and his wife, in 1997, he and his wife have rendered a lot of charitable activities, enhancing poor people’s access
to quality education and healthcare and building their capacity to participate in mainstream social, political and economic activities of their communities.
Ike Ekweremadu’s conferment with the coveted national honour of Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR, is further testimony to his selfless service to our country, Nigeria.
Mr. Chief Clerk, I am very much aware of the current travails and conviction of Ike Ekweremadu and his wife in the United Kingdom resulting from their being charged with conspiring to arrange the travel of a 21-year-old from Nigeria to the UK in order to harvest organs for their daughter.
I do realise the implications of their action and I dare say, it is unpleasant and condemnable and can’t be tolerated in any sane or civilized society.
However, it is my fervent desire for very warm relations between the United Kingdom and Federal Republic of Nigeria; for his position as one of the distinguished Senators in the Nigerian Parliament, and also for the sake of their daughter in question whose current health condition is in danger and requires urgent medical attention, you will use your good offices to intervene and appeal to the court and the government of the United Kingdom to be magnanimous enough to temper justice with mercy and let punishment that may have to come take their good character and parental instinct and care into consideration.
I do hope Mr. and Mrs. Ekweremadu have learnt from this distressing experience of theirs to guide
their future actions or inactions so they will continue to be outstanding members of their community and will continue to contribute fully to the good of society in particular and the nation in general.
Please accept the assurances of my highest consideration.
If I have the access to Baba Olusegun Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo on phone, I would have asked him if he is aware of certain facts about the Senator Ike Ekweremadu and the cunny way he went about plans to harvest the poor boys organ which was later exposed by the conscientious UK doctors who do not believe in manipulating others, even if they are poor and helpless. Here are my questions for Baba to Ekweremadu.
(1) Does Baba know that Ekweremadu deliberately distanced himself from the negotiation from the poor boy?
(2) Does Baba know that it was a doctor cousin of Ekweremadu that fraudulently conned the poor boy into traveling abroad for greener pastures which is the latest in Nigerian society nowadays?
(3) Does Baba know that all the money Ekweremadu arranged for the boy was about N4m which is not enough to maintain for more that a few months?
(4) Does Baba know that Ekweremadu also was aware that the boy needed a lot of money to keep maintaining his single kidney for life if he doesn’t want to die young, yet Ekweremadu deliberately arranged only N4m for him?
(5) Does Baba know that it was the sincerity of the UK based doctor that saved the poor boy from being harvested and thrown away like a disposable item?
(6) Does Baba know that when the Doctor asked the boy if he knew what he wanted to do, the boy said they said he should come and do medical test and the Doctor was surprised and raised alarm?
(7) Does Baba know that Ekweremadu didn’t inform any single relation of that innocent poor boy that they were going to harvest his kidney?
(8) Does Baba know that there was no discussion about organ harvesting between the boy and Senator Ekweremadu or his wife or daughter?
(9) Does Baba know that Ekweremadu would have dumped the boy in the lagoon when they get back to o Lagos if they had been successful with the organ harvesting and gave nobody a dime from the money they arranged for him.
(10) Does Baba know that Ekweremadu was the one who allegedly aborted the efforts of the Enugu State Government to establish a kidney center ultral modern Kidney Hospital when he was in office and in charge of a committee in the Senate?
(11) Unfortunately, our own respected Baba Olusegun Okikiola Aremu Mathew Obasanjo doesn’t really know the Ike Ekweremadu that he was defending.
(12) Baba Olusegun Obasanjo should please steer clear of giving recommendations to people of shady character like Ekweremadu because the Honourable Clerk of the British Court has all the facts about Ekweremadu’s tragedy and his wicked intentions to use the organ of an innocent child to protect his own without feelings or adequate arrangements for the poor boy to maintain his health condition in the post organ transplant days.