By Onwubiko Agozino
The detention of Ike Ekweremadu (along with his wife, Beatrice) is a racist-sexist-imperialist act. They are detained on allegations of a conspiracy to traffic a 'minor' for the modern-day slavery plot to harvest the organs of a ‘homeless minor’ for transplant to their own ailing daughter.
Ekweremadu is the Nigerian Senator representing my home constituency of Enugu West but I am writing as a scholar and not as a political supporter. I express some reasonable doubts about the case.
This scandal raises the neglected question of whether the legal system in the UK remains institutionally discriminatory, unknown to many in Nigeria who hail the trial uncritically as proof that the British justice system is fair to all contrqary to a UN experts finding that racism is 'structural, institutionalized, and systemic' in the UK criminal justice system.
Lawyers for the detainees have filed suits in Nigeria to force banks and government agencies to disclose the private details of the registration of the alleged donor to help them to establish their innocence whereas they should know that they have nothing to prove as defendants in a criminal case: the burden of proof lies with the prosecution beyond all reasonable doubts. The UK government should explain why they doubted the age shown on the Nigerian ECOWAS passport in the first place before the young adult allegedly confirmed it to the court as his real age.
Since the aim of their travel to London was stated in an alleged letter to the High Commission visa officers who could have refused a visa if the donor looked like a minor, or if they suspected that it was a plot against the laws regulating organ donations, it could not have been a 'conspiracy' unless the High Commission staff were co-conspirators, or the Ekweremadus were set up.
Based on the Common Law principle of the presumption of marital coercion, Section 34 of the Nigerian Criminal Code says that a married couple cannot be charged with conspiracy unless a third party is involved because (e.g., in Canada) matrimony makes a couple one legal personality. US and Australian Courts have allowed prosecution to proceed in serious cases like terrorism or fraud conspiracy. In the case of the Ekweremadus who openly planned to save a child lawfully with an organ allegedly offered freely by an alleged adult donor, where is the mens rea or criminal mind?
In the UK, all adults are presumed to be organ donors (Organ Donor Act 2020) when they die unless they opted out while alive, and all in need are registered to wait in a queue to prevent material inducements from the rich to influence poor people to donate organs to the rich. About 7000 patients are waiting for organ transplants in the UK and hundreds die a year while awaiting organ donations.
Donors can still volunteer to help individuals, especially if they are related, though relatives may not always be the best match. Relatives still need to give approval in the case of harvesting organs from the dead. In the case of living donors, no one is dead but the voluntary donor can withdraw the offer at any time before the surgery.
If the young donor lied about his age in order to obtain a passport as an adult, or did not know his age as many births go unrecorded in Nigeria, or lied to the UK police about his age in order to gain asylum, he should now be granted asylum because he may have been used as a bait by the UK to entrap the Ekweremadus. He should not be deported to Nigeria nor trafficked to Rwanda by the government of the UK for 'processing'.
The blame lies with conditions in Africa that are forcing many to flee abroad for better chances. This includes rich people who go in search of medical treatments not available in the exploited rich continent. They are often attended to by medical doctors and nurses initially trained with the scarce resources produced by African workers at home before they checked out to provide technical foreign aid to industrialized countries in exchange for huge remittances.
Ekweremadu has individually tried to improve the lives of some of his constituents through his Ikeoha Foundation NGO that awards university bursaries and scholarships and provides adult literacy programming and free medical services to thousands in the face of government failures.
He moved the famous motion on the doctrine of necessity to allow the swearing in of Vice President Jonathan as President following the demise of President Yar'adua. He was physically attacked in public in Germany by some of his detractors in 2019. He is not a saint but even a devil deserves his advocate.
It is understandable that any parents who have a sick child could be taken advantage of by anyone claiming to be a willing organ donor. But if it is discovered that the volunteer is under-age, this should be thoroughly investigated without remanding the Ekweremadus in custody pending weeks of fishy investigations with apparent prejudicial, racist, sexist, and imperialist implications.
Though rich and powerful, the assumptions of white supremacy and patriarchy may have helped to disarticulate their privileged class relations in this case.
If the Ekweremadus were of different skin color or even from different ethnic groups in Nigeria itself, it is unlikely that they would be denied bail, given that they have family in the UK, surrendered their passports, and are recognizable in their own rights.
Remanding both of them in custody shows no concern for the care of their sick daughter. Even if the man is proven to have done something wrong, why detain his wife too, why not detain their daughter and the doctor too if it is a ‘conspiracy’? This discrimination deserves to be denounced by all.
If the couple had $20,000 on them without declaring the amount, it is within the limits of $10,000 maximum each that can be carried without declaration in some jurisdictions. It is patriarchal for the media to report that the confiscated money was found only on the man.
After centuries of imposing modern-day slavery on Africans (not to mention the not so ancient slavery of the Trans Atlantic slavery), no British law-maker has ever been arrested in Africa and denied bail based on an allegation of a conspiracy for human trafficking or for any alleged offense. To do so in Africa would have triggered a major diplomatic row but the neocolonial Nigerian regime is silent about the arrest of a prominent politician because of the assumptions of imperialism and dependency.
I published a book on Black Women and the Criminal Justice System: Towards the Decolonisation of Victimisation in 1997 to show that race-class-gender discrimination is alive and kicking in the UK justice systems. It was republished in 2018.
Let the investigation into this case include an enquiry into alleged racism-sexism-imperialism by the British legal system to help hold the system accountable.
Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech.
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