…To Hell With Sympathizers!
By Bayo Oluwasanmi
Former Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, Dr. Beatrice Ekweremadu and Dr. Obinna Obeta were sentenced at the UK’s Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, to 9 years and eight months, four years and six months, and 10 years in prison respectively.
It was the first conviction of its kind under Britain’s modern slavery laws. The trio were found guilty of trafficking a 21-year-old street trader to the United Kingdom, UK, to donate a kidney for Ekweremadu’s daughter, Sonia, who suffers from deteriorating kidneys and needs regular dialysis.
My sympathy goes to his daughter, Sonia and I pray that she finds a donor soon. But I have no pity for Ekweremadu. The crimes of Ekweremadu finally caught up with him.
Ekweremadu, as part of the feckless ruling class, has been in the Senate for 23 years. He and his rogue colleagues deliberately perpetrated corruption, looting, and embezzlement that left more than 90 per cent of once-middle-income Nigerians now living in crushing poverty.
In 2015, Ekweremadu and other rogue federal lawmakers withdrew N7.75 billion of public funds in four years to purportedly review sections of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution. In 2018, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, detained Ekweremadu over 22 properties in Nigeria, US, UK, and UAE. In 2019, the Enugu-born politician was beaten up by a mob while attending a cultural event in Germany.
Nigeria’s many crises including triple-digit inflation, energy crises, insecurity, and corruption, have a shared root: misrule by a self-dealing elite like Ekweremadu. As a senator for 23 years, he maximized opacity and allowed corruption and mismanagement to flourish.
Ekweremadu’s plot of organ harvesting is one of the ugliest manifestations of everything that has gone wrong with Nigerian politicians. He used his powerful position as a senator to dominate and exploit every facet of the rotten state of Nigeria. Imagine how many world-class hospitals would have been built with the money stolen by Ekweremadu and other thieves.
Ekweremadu, as a member of a stinkingly corrupt ruling class, is responsible for our economic woes. Naira, our local currency, has lost more than 90 per cent of its value. Triple-digit hyper-inflation has taken hold. Food prices are off the roof. Unemployment is soaring every day. Businesses are closing or relocating. Nigeria is losing its gifted and talented men and women to ‘japa’ – emigration. Power outages are the new normal. Internet services are intermittent. Hospitals are without medicines. Nigeria has been driven to bankruptcy and its institutions weakened.
Due to the corruption of Ekweremadu and his gang of legislator-thieves, millions of Nigerians have died from kidney failure, hypertension, malnutrition, homelessness, joblessness, and grinding poverty.
To hell with those who sympathized with Ekweremadu for being jailed for his crime. They should bury their heads in shame. Some of the fools even gave the trial of Ekweremadu ethnic coloration by saying because of “Igbo phobia,” UK and Nigeria are selectively prosecuting Igbos. The dimwits are too daft to see the correlation between crime and punishment. They forget the UK is a nation of laws not of men. Weep not for Ekweremadu, weep for poor Nigerians.
Ekweremadu deserves 50 years’ jail sentence. Like Ekweremadu, the sins of other destroyers of Nigeria will find them out. It’s not a question of if, but when. The wheels of justice grind slowly but surely.
We wish Ekweremadu a happy stay and a rewarding experience at London penitentiary.
•Oluwasanmi, a United States of America, USA-based journalist can be reached at bjoluwasanmi@gmail.com
