On June 23, 2022, Nigerian senator and former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice Ekweremadu, were arrested at Heathrow Airport in London by the Metropolitan Police.

On June 23, 2022, Nigerian senator and former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice Ekweremadu, were arrested at Heathrow Airport in London by the Metropolitan Police. They were accused of conspiring to bring a 21-year-old Nigerian to the United Kingdom for the purpose of harvesting his kidney for their daughter, an act classified under British law as organ trafficking and exploitation under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The case quickly became one of the most prominent international criminal cases involving a Nigerian political figure.

Following their arrest, the Ekweremadus were charged on June 23, 2022, at the Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court in London. British prosecutors alleged that the couple arranged for the young man to travel to the UK with the intention of using him as an organ donor without proper consent. The case was later transferred to the Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey), where it proceeded to trial.

The trial formally began in January 2023 at the Old Bailey in London. On March 23, 2023, a jury found Ike Ekweremadu, Beatrice Ekweremadu, and a medical intermediary, Obinna Obeta, guilty of conspiracy to arrange the travel of a person for exploitation. The verdict marked the first successful prosecution of organ-trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act in the United Kingdom.

On May 5, 2023, the Old Bailey sentenced Ekweremadu to nine years and eight months in prison, while Beatrice Ekweremadu received four years and six months, and Obinna Obeta was sentenced to 10 years.

In November 2025, a Nigerian government delegation, led by the foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, requested Ekweremadu’s deportation so he could serve his remaining sentence in Nigeria.

However, the request was rejected because the UK government was concerned that there were no guarantees that Ekweremadu would continue his prison sentence after being deported.