The transparency and speed with which the United Kingdom court tried and convicted the former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, alongside his wife, Beatrice, and a medical doctor, Obinna Obeta, is a lesson for the Nigerian judiciary, which operates an administration of criminal justice system skewed towards protecting the high and mighty, and punishing the poor, Alex Enumah writes
The swift conviction of the former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu; his wife, Beatrice and a medical doctor, Obinna Obeta, by a United Kingdom court, less than one year after they were arrested in London for attempting to harvest a human organ has exposed the mischief of the Nigerian judiciary in the administration of criminal justice system.
On June 2022 Ekweremadu and his wife, alongside the doctor were arrested by the UK Metropolitan Police for attempting to convince doctors at the Royal Free Hospital to perform an £80,000 transplant on a 21-year-old street trader, David Nwamini, who was presented as the cousin of Ekweremadu’s daughter, Sonia. Despite their social status, Ekweremadu and his wife were promptly remanded in custody after they were arraigned and denied bail by Uxbridge Magistrate Court, which adjourned the matter till July 7, 2022, for hearing.
Barely eleven months later, the court sentenced the former Deputy Senate President to a total of nine years and eight months imprisonment, while his wife, Beatrice, was sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment. The third accomplice, a medical doctor, Obeta, was jailed for 10 years.
Their earlier conviction in March 2023 was the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act in the UK.
The court heard that the young man was said to have been offered an illegal reward of £7,000 to become a donor for Sonia after a kidney disease forced her to drop out of a Master’s degree in Film at Newcastle University.
Ekweremadu had denied offering money to the prospective kidney donor to save his sick daughter. His wife also denied involvement in the search for an organ donor for their ailing daughter.
The sentencing came after pleas from multiple prominent personalities and institutions, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The transparency, smoothness and speed with which the UK authorities conducted the trial showed the effectiveness of their administration of the criminal justice system. In convicting Ekweremadu, Justice Johnson did not consider how high his status was in Nigeria.
Not even the intervention of eminent persons and groups could save him.
To many Nigerians, there are a lot of lessons to be learnt in the conviction of the embattled deputy senate president, his wife and Obeta. In their views, the same offence for which they were convicted in the UK is a regular occurrence in Nigeria.
They said that if the same offence was committed in Nigeria, not only would the trial drag at snail speed for 10 years or more until Nigerians forget about it, there is a possibility that nothing would have happened to them.
In Nigeria, when suspects, especially the rich and mighty are arrested and arraigned, not only will the case drag on for years until it is forgotten in courts, but it would be struck out for lack of diligent prosecution which is deliberately caused by compromised prosecutors.
What it takes for the rich and powerful to evade justice in Nigeria is to hire good senior lawyers who know how to use ‘smart’ arguments and objections to deliberately waste the time of the courts and frustrate the judges.
Some of these senior lawyers are also notorious for bribing corrupt judges to circumvent justice.
Though there is no dearth of laws in the country, what many believe are also lacking are diligent prosecution and the political will to move against the powerful and influential people who contravene the law.
While in most developed countries, the high and mighty are prosecuted and appropriately convicted and sentenced to prison, the same cannot be said of Nigeria where the rich and famous frequently compromise the law enforcement officers and the judiciary to evade arrest, prosecution and conviction.
Though Ekweremadu and his wife were denied bail in the UK, influential people like them who commit more heinous crimes in Nigeria, including murder, manslaughter and those who stole public funds, or commit other financial crimes are granted bail and allowed to walk the streets freely when they are supposed to be behind bars.
Many Nigerians are aware that it was in order to enhance the justice sector delivery system to impact the quality of justice and avoid delays in the adjudicatory process in the country that the Administration of Criminal Justice Act was signed into law in 2015.
But eight years after, there has not been any improvement in the country’s criminal justice system, especially when the rich is involved.
While the poor languish in prison without trial for minor offences, the rich who commit grievous crimes were either given a slap on the wrist or granted bail to enjoy their freedom.
It is only Nigeria that the court will put the rich behind bars, and a superior court will grant him bail or acquit him totally.
This is why many feel that if Ekweremadu’s case had taken place in the country, the case would have remained in court indefinitely, without any conviction of the accused persons.
This calls to question the faulty administration of criminal justice system in Nigeria by dubious law enforcement officers, corrupt senior lawyers and compromised judges.
Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Femi Falana had since identified this flaw, when he raised the alarm that Nigeria operates a double criminal justice system – one for the rich and one for the poor.
In a paper titled: ‘The Danger of Unequal Criminal Justice System in Nigeria,’ which he presented recently at the Law Week of the Epe Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Lagos, Falana argued that apart from two former governors namely, Messrs Joshua Dariye of Plateau State and Jolly Nyame of Taraba State, the list of persons convicted for corruption was made of lowly placed individuals in the society, adding that owing to abuse of court process, rich defendants have continued to frustrate their prosecution with the connivance of some senior lawyers.
According to Falana, “By virtue of section 17 (2) (a) of the Constitution of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), every citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law.
“But in practice, the rich and poor defendants are not treated equally by Nigerian courts. Apart from the fact that rich litigants have the means to hire the services of the best lawyers in any area of the law, the courts are manned by judges who are not neutral in the class struggle being waged daily by the Nigerian people.”
The world will continue to mock the Nigerian judiciary and their compromised judgments until judges start delivering, fair, just and transparent judgments speedily and treat all Nigerians equally, irrespective of class.
