NIGERIAN doctor Emmanuel Edet and his wife Antan have sentenced to six years imprisonment each by the Harrow Crown Court in northwest London after they were convicted of keeping Ofonime Sunday Inuk as a slave for 24 years.
In a shocking case that revealed modern day slavery at its worst, the Akwa Ibom-born Edets were convicted of enslaving fellow Nigerian Ofonime Sunday Inuk for 24 years between 1989 and 2013. Emmanuel Edet, 61, and Antan Edet, 58, were found guilty by the court last month and yesterday, they were handed their stiff prison terms.
They were convicted of participating in child cruelty, slavery and assisting in illegal immigration. In 1989, the couple had brought Mr Inuk to Britain when he was 14 years old, with a promise that they would educate and pay him but instead forced him to work long hours for no pay and threatened him with deportation if he tried to escape.
He received no education and had only very limited contact with his family and the outside world after the couple took his passport and failed to process identity documents for him. Prosecutors said that the victim, now 40, was forced to cook, clean, garden and care for the couple’s children without any pay for up to 17 hours a day and he had to eat alone and typically slept on the floor.
Prosecutor Damaris Lakin said: “He felt trapped and completely dependent on the Edets. Emanuel and Antan Edet have cruelly robbed this victim of 24 years of his life.
"They have treated him with complete contempt. This was a shocking case of modern-day slavery.”
Prosecutors said the Edets had changed the victim’s name and added him to their family passport as their son when they brought him into Britain. Dr Edet, who worked for Surrey County Council has written several academic works on child welfare and is an expert on teenage pregnancies and is the author of guidelines followed by hundreds of health workers, while his wife is a senior ward manager at Ealing Hospital.
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