LONDON: A high-powered delegation sent by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has met with top officials of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice to discuss the case of former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who has been serving a prison sentence in Britain since March 2023.
The Nigerian delegation, which included the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), held talks with British officials on Monday, November 10.
The meeting marks a renewed diplomatic effort by the Tinubu administration to engage the UK over the controversial conviction.
Following the discussions, the delegation was hosted at the Nigerian High Commission in London by Ambassador Mohammed Maidugu, the Acting High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and a medical doctor were convicted under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act for conspiring to arrange the travel of a young Nigerian man to London for alleged organ harvesting.
The former Senate Deputy President was sentenced to nine years and eight months in prison, marking the first high-profile conviction of its kind under the law.
The Tinubu administration’s diplomatic intervention comes amid growing attention on the delicate intersections between Nigerian and British legal jurisdictions, especially in cases involving high-profile figures.
Observers note that this move recalls similar instances of cross-border legal entanglements involving prominent Nigerians, such as the trial of former Delta State Governor James Ibori in the UK and Nigeria’s long-running legal victory in the P&ID case, which saw a London court overturn a multi-billion-dollar judgment against the country over evidence of fraud.
While details of the meeting’s outcomes remain undisclosed, the gesture underscores a new phase of diplomatic engagement between Abuja and London over one of the most widely followed criminal cases involving a Nigerian politician abroad.
