Holding on to office despite grave allegations, Ike Ekweremadu, in view

Ike Ekweremadu – Why The UK politic is progressive, and Nigerian politicians learn nothing?

On 22 June 2022, the former Deputy Senate President and his wife, Beatrice Nwanneka Ekweremadu, were arrested on conspiracy to arrange and facilitate the travel of another person with a view to exploitation – organ harvesting.

They were charged and appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court the following day, 23 June 2022.

The court refused to grant him bail for fear that “he may jump bail and run back to Nigeria.”

The Senator, 60, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party representing Enugu West, has held on to his seat, and the political party had publicly declared support despite the graveness of the accusation.

If Ekweremadu were an MP in the United Kingdom, wherein he is currently being held, he would have lost his seat in an instant, or the Senator could have resigned his seat to allow a replacement for the gain of the constituency he represents.

In June 2022, Tory Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher resigned from the government after being accused of groping two men at a private members’ club.

He told his colleagues in his resignation letter that he “drank far too much” and “embarrassed myself and other people” at the Carlton Club.

Neil Parish, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, stepped down after being accused of watching porn on his phone in the House of Commons in April 2022.

The MP claimed he had opened the link “in error” in an emotional interview with the BBC.

“The situation was that – funnily enough, it was tractors I was looking at,” he said. “I did get into another website that had a very similar name, and I watched it for a bit which I shouldn’t have done.

“But my crime – biggest crime – is that on another occasion, I went in a second time.” “What I did was absolutely wrong.”

He added, “a moment of madness,” “I was wrong, I was stupid, I lost sense of mind.

“I make a full apology. A total, full apology. It was not my intention to intimidate.”

In 2014, a conservative MP, Brooks Newman, resigned as Minister for civil society England and Wales after he was accused of inappropriately sending a picture of himself to an undercover reporter who pretended to be a female political campaigner.

He was barely three months into his role before the incident happened.

Britain’s defense secretary, Michael Fallon, 65, had to step down in 2017 after it emerged that he placed his hand on a radio journalist’s knee at dinner over a decade earlier.

This is even after the journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer described the incident as “mildly amusing,” defending that “No one was remotely upset or distressed” about the incident.

In Nigeria, politicians would rather die holding on to their post than stepping down in shame, and the political parties defend their members no matter how grievous the allegations with evidence may be.

In April 2022, Isa Pantami, the Nigerian Minister of communications and Digital economy, was heard in a leaked audio supporting Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram.

During a sermon in 2000, he said former Al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden was a better Muslim than himself, and in another audio, he expressed happiness that “infidels” were massacred.

Nigerians called for his resignation after the audio circulated on social media. When he refused to step down, angry Nigerians turned to their President, Muhammadu Buhari.

In a non-surprising twist, the Nigerian Presidency responded, saying it “stands behind” Pantani.

A presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, said in a statement that Pantani was subjected to a “cancel campaign.”

He added, “In the 2000s, the Minister was a man in his twenties; next year, he will be 50. Time has passed, and people and their opinions – often rightly – change.”

Mr. Shehu claimed the Minister had turned a new leaf. “understanding of religious issues at the time” and that he has changed several positions “based on new evidence and maturity.”

On Thursday, a Nigerian lawyer, Ogochukwu Onyema, petitioned a federal high court in Abuja to declare Ike Ekweremadu’s seat.

Onyema ran against Ekweremadu in 2019 and lost.

The attorney requested that the court order PDP national chairman Iyorchia Ayu submit his name as a replacement in a lawsuit with the file number FHC/EN/CS/7/2022.

The Nigerian government, political parties, and individual politicians have lost a sense of responsibility, shame, and carelessness about reputation. The politicians would die holding on to power than make a decision that would benefit the people they claimed to represent.

Organ harvesting is the height of accusations, and at this point, Senator Ike Ekweremadu still receives his salary despite being held in the United Kingdom’s cell and will return to his seat shamelessly and blame his travail on his political opponent.

Pastors might invite him to give testimony and blame the devil for trying to break him. Meanwhile, the shame will remain on Nigeria and the people – The Nigerian Senator who was arrested after trying to harvest an organ for his sick daughter.

A Nigerian resident, Enakhe, said, “He may still be receiving his salaries and allowances; this is why our institutions are weakened, personalized, parochialized, rendered ineffective because it is ‘paddy paddy’ business instead of looking at the national interest and morality confidence building of doing what is necessary for the circumstances, we set bad obnoxious precedence.”

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