Britain Arraigns Nigerian Doc And His Nurse Wife For Keeping A Man As Slave For 24 Years

A trained obstetrician and gynaecologist, 60-year-old Dr Emmanuel Edet and his wife, 58-year-old Antan who is a senior hospital nurse have been arrested in Britain for allegedly keeping another Nigerian, Ofonime Sunday Inuk, as a 'slave' for 24 years. 

Today, Ofonime Inuk, 39, an orphan, told the court he was kept a slave by the NHS doctor and his wife for 24 years after being hired at 12 and smuggled into Britain at the age of 14.

He presented a diary in which he recorded all the  maltreatment he's gotten from the couple, the most recent being a punch in the right eye when his master's wife spotted him with his phone in the kitchen.

Asked by the prosecutor Roger Smart, why he received such treatment, he said: 'Because they always said I had a destructive hand, that I was always mishandling things.'

He kept a record of how he was allegedly given 'pocket money', of £5 or £10, forced to sleep in the corridor, and to sit in the kitchen all day.

He was not allowed to use the landline in the house, or to charge his phone, though he did so secretly at night.

When a visitor came to stay, he cooked for him, and had to go out of the house in the daytime to make it look like he had a job, the court heard.

He was made to sleep on the kitchen floor on a dirty foam mattress thrown out by a hospital and was expected to get up first and begin cleaning the house, but was told to sweep instead of using a vacuum cleaner because it was too noisy.

 Inuk was also forced to wash clothes by hand because the Edets said it was too expensive to run the washing machine. 

He always ate by himself, kept his few possessions in a single bag and was not allowed to sit in the front room or go upstairs.

At a point, he attempted undertaking a college course in computer skills but the Edets stopped him.

 He described how he was frightened of the couple and that he was not 'free'. 

Giving his evidence from behind a screen so he cannot see the couple, Inuk told the court his ordeal began at 12 when his father died and he willingly went to work for the Edets in Lagos after he was introduced to them through a family friend.

He was to be paid for his work and sent to school, but this never happened despite the family moving to Israel and then, when he was 14, to Britain. 

They brought him into Britain by changing his name to their surname and falsely adding him to their passports.

He was left to bring up their two sons as they travelled across Britain working. 

He was told that if he left the house and reported matters to the police he would be arrested as an illegal immigrant and sent back to Nigeria. 

When Inuk sought help, he was turned away by police who simply recorded his case as a lost passport, and by social services who said they could not help because he was an adult. 

He finally escaped in 2013, while the Edets travelled to Nigeria for Christmas after hearing about another case in the media. He contacted a charity which tipped off police who were stunned to find him alone in their £450,000 home in Perivale, monitored by a CCTV camera.  

Dr Edet and his wife are being prosecuted under modern anti-slavery legislation for cruelty to a person under 16, slavery and assisting unlawful immigration.