By Tunde Oyedoyin, London
A Royal Free Hospital dialysis expert who carried out a routine pre-surgical assessment for the kidney donor Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s daughter proposed told jurors at the Old Bailey yesterday that he had concerns about his suitability and that he didn’t seem to know the implications of what he had signed up for.
Prosecution witness, Dr. David DuPont, said as part of normal clinical practice of interviewing potential donors so as to be certain they were not being “forced or under duress or coerced nor induced” to donate their organ, he asked David Nwamini these and other questions during a face-to-face meeting at the clinic last year February.
Though he said Nwamini “denied that he was being paid” to donate one of his kidneys for Sonia Ekweremadu, but he “was very subdued” during the meeting and “didn’t seem to understand what he had signed for.”
Led in the witness box by Crown prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC, DuPont said the meeting with Nwamini threw up a couple of red flags which he knew might constitute a hurdle when he is put forward to the Human Tissue Authority for approval as the regulator of organ donation from living people.
Though he said Nwamini said Sonia and him are “first cousins and that he heard about her condition from his “aunt”, Beatrice Ekweremadu, in October 2021, when asked if anyone else in the wider family wanted to donate, “he said he didn’t know.” Besides, he said he had not seen Sonia in over a decade.
Continuing his testimony, DuPont said: “It came as a surprise to me that a young man of his age would want to do it.”
The medical expert witness also told the court that when he asked further questions, including what he was doing, and what his parents do, Nwamini said he was “studying for his GCSE” and that his “parents are traders.”
These, DuPont told the court, “was a red flag.” He said he was concerned that they may not be able to fund his aftercare when he returns to Nigeria.
The senator, his wife, Beatrice, their daughter, Sonia and Dr. Obinna Obeta, are on trial for conspiracy to arrange and facilitate travel with the aim of exploitation.
Source: The Guardian
