In 2019, an unknown Nigerian lady called Zainab Aliyu was arrested in Saudi Arabia because a suitcase with her name on it contained illegal drugs. Ditto for another passenger on the same flight, Ibrahim Abubakar.  In Saudi Arabia, trafficking in drugs comes with a mandatory death sentence, unlike what happened to Bartholomew Owoh and two others when they were executed under a retroactive Law in 1985 by then Head of State, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.

Immediately they were arrested, the government of President Buhari swung into action.  The government claimed there was a drug cartel in Aminu Kano Airport that planted drugs in the luggage of innocent passengers.  We never saw the arrest or arraignment or trial of the seven-man gang that the government claimed to have busted. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was directed to ‘request for a full investigation to ascertain the innocence of Zainab Aliyu and Ibrahim Abubakar.’ (Vanguard, 14th May 2019).  Zainab and Ibrahim were both released amidst much fanfare, with Governor Abdullahi Ganduje gifting them with N3 million each and Abike Dabiri congratulating the president on their release.

Contrast that with the deafening silence of the Federal Government of Nigeria, whose serving Senator and former Deputy Senate President, Distinguished Senator Ike Ekweremadu and his wife have just been arrested in the United Kingdom and remanded in custody over a case that simply makes no sense.

Before going into the details of the alleged crime, let us look at the UK Police reaction in 2019, when Mrs Anna Sacoolas, the wife of a CIA agent drove on the wrong side of the road and killed a young 19-year-old man, Harry Dunn.  Mr Dunn died on the spot.  The police arrived, breathalysed Mrs Sacoolas and she returned to her house at the US Airforce base where her husband was stationed.  Then, while the British Police considered the US request to apply Diplomatic Immunity even though neither the CIA Agent nor his wife were covered under the Vienna Convention, a British Diplomat quietly advised them to flee the country and using a US jet, Mrs Sacoolas fled the USA where she still has not faced justice despite admitting that she killed Mr Dunn. She was not detained for even one hour for killing a young man because, of course, the British were wary of offending the Americans.

Contrast that with the scandalous manner in which they handled Senator Ike Ekweremadu and his wife, a serving Nigerian Senator, former Deputy Senate President, the first Deputy Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament and then, Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament – an entitled holder of a Nigerian Diplomatic passport which should have at least caused the British Authorities to extend the same courtesies they extended to the wife of a CIA agent, who was not a Diplomatic Agent by at least informing the Nigerian High Commission and then letting the Senator and his wife to stay in his house in London while they carried out their investigation.  His arrest, immediate arraignment and instant incarceration while the authorities seek the approval of the UK Attorney General to prosecute him for what we do not yet understand is a open slap on the face of Nigeria – it is a way of telling Nigeria that Nigeria is viewed with total disdain and does not matter, no matter what polite murmurings they make.  And unlike the case of Zainab and Ibrahim, we still have not heard anything – not from the High Commissioner in London, Ambassador Sarafa Tunji Isola or from Senator Ahmad Lawan, the Senate President, nor from President Muhammadu Buhari, whose senior lawmaker has been humiliated, nor from the Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, to protest the violation of diplomatic protocol in the arrest.  Nothing. Not a word.  Why?

They have not demanded to know which particular law the man had broken as well as demand ‘a thorough investigation to ascertain his innocence’ as they did for Zainab Aliyu and Ibrahim Abubakar.  Nobody asked how the singular ‘organ donation’ was suddenly perverted to ‘harvesting organs’ (plural). Nobody has asked how someone duly interviewed by the British High Commission and issued a visa suddenly reached the UK and transformed into a homeless minor made to believe he was going to the UK only for a better life because the Distinguished Senator obviously had nothing better to do with his time and money.

So what exactly was the ‘crime’ that made the UK Authorities incarcerate our senior senator and his wife, denying them access to their terminally ill daughter, for whom they did what any parent would do – look for a way to save her.

They applied for a medical visa to the British High Commission and stated that Mr Ukpo Nwamini was going for the purpose of being an organ donor for their daughter at the Royal Free Hospital, according to a document circulating.  Mr Ukpo’s visa states he is 21 years old.  So does his N.I.N., which cannot be issued to anyone under 18 years of age.  Under both UK and Nigerian Law, Mr Nwamini is a full adult.

We then go to his visa interview. Anyone who has ever endured a British Visa interview or filled one of their forms will attest that they ask you literally everything that can be asked except how many teeth you have.  They conduct the most rigorous interviews I have ever known – and I have been through many.  Mr Nwamini would have had to produce his school records through the years just to prove his age, not to mention the birth certificate that he used for the passport and NIN. 

As an adult he would have gone through an interview with no one else present. Thus, he must have convinced the British Consular Officer that he was indeed 21 years old, that he understood the purpose for which he was travelling and that he posed no flight risk, all without anybody else present to coach him, coerce him or intimidate him.  So are the British Authorities saying that their thoroughly trained Consular Officer did not apply their training to recognise a potential trafficking victim, especially in light of the detailed letter stating he was going for organ donation?  I think not. They are extremely thorough.

No Nigerian I’ve spoken with, who has seen the picture of Mr Nwamini, believes he is under 18 let alone 15 years old.  Did the UK Police order a Bone-age assessment test to determine his age before taking his word that he was 15 years old and destroying the good name of the Senator and his family?

According to the Guardian of 24th June 2022, it was during the pre-surgery interview process that Mr Nwamini claimed he was 15 and claimed he did not know he was in the UK for organ donation and the surgeon contacted the police. But it still does not explain the scandalous treatment of Senator and Mrs Ekweremadu.  They didn’t even give consideration to the fact that they are the principle carers of their terminally ill daughter.

Again, let us look at a real life case of modern slavery that just concluded in February this year – the case of Mr Peter Swailes who along with his late father, enslaved a slightly retarded man in a disgusting shed for over 40 years, was given a nine months sentence, suspended for 18 months for modern slavery, with no order to pay restitution to the 58-year-old victim. 

An appeal court decided the sentence was not too lenient.  Mr Swailes was not locked up pending trial even though the investigating officer had said:  ‘In all my years of enforcement, I have never known a modern slavery case where exploitation has taken place over such a long period of time’.  The victim’s shed was said to be deplorable when compared with the dog’s shed that was next to his.  Mr Swailes did not spend a single day in custody for the 40 years enslavement of another human being.

But compare that with the ongoing case of a Nigerian couple in Ireland who will be sentenced later this month for keeping a woman doing domestic work for two years in Dublin.  They have already been told to pay her £10,000.00 restitution; even before the criminal sentence they will receive this month. 

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Can Nigerians look beyond their noses to see the common thread here?  What crime did the senator actually commit?  Nothing that can be adduced so far and we have not heard that the British Foreign Office has recalled the Consular Officer that dealt with Mr Nwamini.

All Nigerians should be furious – that our esteem in the eyes of the world has fallen so low that a serving Nigerian Senator and his wife – who hitherto had led an unblemished life, would be remanded in custody for two weeks, charged with an ‘offence’ where no offence can be found, while murder suspects and real, convicted modern slavery criminals walk free.

Nigerian diplomats have told of many, many situations where domestic help that accompany officers on posting do exactly what this Mr Nwamini did – they go to the authorities and claim that they were trafficked and have been kept as slaves.  This has happened not only to Nigerian diplomats, but Indian, Colombian, Bangladeshi, South African and so many other diplomats from the ‘developing’ world.  This practice has destroyed many a promising career and the innate bias of Western countries has usually meant that the diplomats or other professionals of foreign descent are usually tried in the media and portrayed in the worst possible way as cruel, inhuman monsters who abuse their domestic servants and treat them like slaves. It plays to the gallery of ‘these uncivilised barbarians’ that is still used to portray Africa in the West and their sentences are usually very severe. 

Nigerians, with swift colonial mentality, did not even consider that even the Metropolitan police can sometimes make mistakes.  No human or institution is infallible.  But immediately, because it was the UK that arrested the Senator, everybody automatically believed there must be a crime without questioning how such a well-exposed lawyer would take an underage child to the UK of all places to ‘harvest his organs’ – something that sounds like a home-movie plot!

It is heartening to hear his former colleagues – Senators Dino Melaye and Shehu Sani – express their support and, of course, former Governor Peter Obi expressing his prayers for the family.

But we need the government to speak. The same way that they spoke when Zainab Aliyu and Ibrahim Abubakar were arrested in Saudi Arabia with drugs in the luggage – whether planted or only alleged to have been planted.

We need the government to say that this is not the proper way to treat a Senator of the Federal Republic.  Can Nigerians even imagine Nigerian police arresting and detaining even the lowest member of the British parliament on a visit to Nigeria, no matter their crime?

We have to rise from our colonial mentality.  The fact that the UK could do this without the usual diplomatic protocols followed under situations such as this is an affront to Nigeria.

If Senator Ekweremadu applied for a visa with the necessary documents clearly stating the purpose for which the visa was needed and a British Consular officer did their due diligence (which I have absolutely no doubt he/she did) and Mr Nwamini at no point indicated he was being intimidated, harassed, coerced or forced to travel to the UK and convinced the Consular Officer that he was legit, then the onus falls on the British authorities to explain what intentions could possibly be behind the accusation of ‘trafficking’ Mr Nwamini.  Traffic him, how?    And how is kidney donation a crime when in this case, the donor agreed. 

Surely the accusation of harvesting organs is more applicable to the UK itself, which has made all UK adults mandatory organ donors (literally harvesting their entire organs) unless they take the time to fill forms to opt out? And how many people know that by UK law, their organs are no longer theirs to keep if they have not opted out?

If Mr Nwamini is found to be under 18 after a bone age test, the onus is to prove that he did not lie to the Senator, and that his family did not put him up to this outrage as a way to help him emigrate to the United Kingdom – a scenario that any Nigerian can attest to the British authorities is most likely to be the 100 per cent truth of the matter.

But in the meantime, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Nigerian Senate, the Presidency, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Nigerian High Commission MUST rise up and condemn this disgrace, which is a slap on the collective face of Nigeria and shows how low Nigeria has sunk in global estimation.  The treatment given to the Senator is NOT right. It is NOT acceptable.  And whether you like him or not, the next person to be at the receiving end of the media trial or implausible offence may be you.

And the government will keep mute.

*Lian writes from London