For months running, the entire family of Nigeria’s former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu were drown in ridiculous scandal over alleged organ harvesting in far away country, London. Different stories were told on the circumstances that culminated to their ordeal. But the bottom line of those tales that ignited the now celebrated tragedies of the Ekweremadu’s, remains a genuine but compassionate attempt rescue their dying child from the claws of death.
Ironically, it has become a sympathy mission gone wrong. That singular effort to deliver their daughter from the horrendous hand of death has exposed the family into public scorn. Indeed, shame kills faster disease as the saying goes in the rhymes of Africa’s cosmology. From pillar to post, the Ekweremadu’s ran, yet there’s no end insight to their problem. Today, their sick daughter who stoke the fire of this imbroglio is in the first chapter of death book as the reported organ transplant of the innocent child, still hangs in the balance. Only recently, she made a passionate appeal to Nigerians to come to her aid so that she would live again like every normal child of her age. While this appeal is lost in wondering contemplation, his father, Senator Ekweremadu, languishes in London jail.
But a can of worm was opened yesterday, when the incarcerated Lawmaker raised alarm that the federal government was behind his perpetual order in the United Kingdom. While most Nigerians were beginning to express sympathy for the embattled Senator, the Nigerian government was busy fighting seriously to claim his properties.
Only last Thursday, the former Deputy Senate President through his counsel, a senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Chief Adegboyega Minowolo, claimed that the federal government had written to the court, seeking the forfeiture of not less than forty properties belonging to Ekweremadu, allegedly acquired through fraudulent means.
Ekweremadu’s counsel further averred that the forfeiture order was granted to the federal government in error, because, according to him, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC that stood for the government, concealed vital information and facts in respect of the properties. In this guise, Ekweremadu through his counsel, asked the court to quash the matter, by setting aside the order.
The federal government have denied any link to Ekweremadu’s travail. But counsel to the EFCC, Silvanus Tahir (SAN) who dismissed the allegation, admitted that the EFCC wrote the London court based on a special request, adding that it’s a normal routine to exchange information that would aid the dispensation of justice.
For most Nigerians, this effort to further drag the name of the former deputy Senate President to the mud is an affront against Nigeria as a nation. Either the British government or the Americans would allow their personnel to be so treated and exposed to public embarrassment. It’s in public domain how the American place value on the life of ordinary American. Instances abound how America had threatened war against a nation over the maltreatment of their citizens. Ditto applies to the United Kingdom.
But this is not the case in Nigeria, a country where life brutish and meaningless. For the Nigeria’s government, the welfare and life their citizens are insignificant.
For now, Ekweremadu deserves the sympathy of Nigerians. As it’s said in popular parlance, let’s chase the hawk away before we come to warn the chickens against wondering in the bush.
