The proprietor of Gregory University Uturu (GUU), Professor Greg Ibe, has appealed to King Charles lll of England, to grant pardon to Nigeria’s former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice, jailed in London over organ harvest plot.
Ekweremadu was Friday, along with Dr Obinna Obeta, sentenced to 10 years in prison by a London Court, while his wife was to serve a jail term of four years for allegedly facilitating the movement of a youth from Nigeria to London for his kidney to be harvested and transplanted to their daughter, Sonia, down with kidney disease.
Before the court judgement, prominent individuals including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and House of Representatives, as well as ECOWAS Parliament, had appealed for clemency which the court appeared to have ignored.
But worried over the fate of beneficiaries of Senator Ekweremadu’s scholarship scheme, Professor Ibe, appealed to King Charles to consider Royal pardon for the Ekweremadus.
According to him the hope of thousands of indigent students in different tertiary institutions under the sponsorship will be dashed and their studies truncated if the former Speaker, ECOWAS Parliament remains in prison.
Professor Ibe who was the Abia State governorship candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, in the just-concluded election, noted that his intercession for the Ekweremadus did not amount to justifying their actions but on compassion grounds in view of their peculiar circumstance.
He passionately appealed to King Charles to give humanitarian and diplomatic consideration to the matter to save those depending on Ekweremadu’s philanthropic gestures for their education.
Professor Ibe who made the appeals in a press statement he personally signed, also advocated immediate commencement of appeal processes to appeal the judgement.
CULLED FROM VANGUARD
