A Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) officer said on Thursday that while a passport presented in a London property ownership case involving senior lawyer Mike Ozekhome shared features of a genuine copy, it has no record in the NIS database.
The principal staff officer to the comptroller-general of the NIS, Akim Aridegbe, said this under cross-examination by defence lawyers during a hearing in the impersonation and forgery trial of Mr Ozekhome and his co-accused Ponfa Useni.
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The trial, which started earlier in the year, is ongoing at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court in Abuja.
The office of the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) arraigned Messrs Ozekhome and Useni on 12 counts of forgery and impersonation on 27 February.
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Mr Useni is the son of the late Jeremiah Useni, who was said to have acquired the London property with the name, Tali Shani, in the 1990s while serving as the FCT Minister under the General Sani Abacha regime.
According to the charges, the defendants conspired in 2020 alongside the late Jeremiah Useni, a retired general and Ponfa Useni’s father, and made “a false Nigerian International Passport No. A07535463 with the name Tali Shani, and purportedly to have been issued by the NIS” to claim a property in the United Kingdom.
Similarly, the prosecution charged them with “using a false passport to facilitate the claim of the property.”
The prosecution also alleged that Mr Ozekhome helped Ponfa Useni to impersonate Tali Shani in 2020. Together, they allegedly created a fake “Irrevocable Power of Attorney” to help Mr Ozekhome claim the property.
They denied all the allegations.
‘No record of Tali Shani passport in NIS database’
During Thursday’s cross-examination, Mr Aridegbe fielded questions from the defence lawyers which elicited some of his past testimonies.
Mr Useni’s lawyer, F.R. Onoja, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), asked him if the NIS kept a record of all passport booklets in its database. The witness replied yes.
Mr Aridegbe, the first prosecution witness, explained further that the NIS has processes which include payment, verification of payment, enrollment, production and issuance, but that none relating to the passport in issue in the trial was found in the database.
Mr Onoja then asked the witness to look at the passport and confirm if it contained features NIS issued. The witness replied, “Yes.”
He also confirmed that all passports bore unique numbers. When asked if the numbers were generated serially by the NIS computerised system, the witness answered, “I will say no.”
Explaining further, he said, “These passports from the manufacturers come with unique numbers, and it is only the data pages that are different, having enrolled the applicant and passport produced.”
Earlier, the witness said he was fully abreast of the facts of the case.
When asked if the NIS would be embarrassed if it emerged that the controversial Tali Shani passport with the number A07535463 was issued by the service, the witness affirmed, “Yes.”
He confirmed that the Nigerian passport is a machine-readable document and has specific features that can only be read by specific types of machines.
Witness speaks on ‘fake’ authentication letter
The witness also maintained that the name, Abdulkadir Lawan, who purportedly issued a letter on behalf of NIS to authenticate the passport bearing “Tali Shani”, did not appear on the nominal roll of the NIS. When asked if he particularly checked the roll call himself, the witness answered, “We checked the nominal roll; it was teamwork.”
Insisting that he personally checked, the witness said, “I checked and the team also did.”
He also informed the court that the team searched the nominal roll of all the years, “and we could not find that name.”
Similarly, all the nominal rolls are kept in a database in electronic form, the witness said; however, he could not recall how many names were on the nominal roll.
This testimony is consistent with what he said on 13 March, when he first took the stand in the case led by the prosecution lawyer, Rotimi Oyedepo, a SAN and the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Mr Aridegbe testified at the previous proceedings that the NIS received a letter from the EFCC requesting an interview with Abdulkadir Lawan.
The officer, who flatly called the letter fake, said that after checking the legal unit and nominal roll of the NIS, the name did not exist and did not appear on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel System (IPPIS).
Similarly, a letter written by the same Abdulkadir Lawan did not represent the NIS.
Thereafter, the trial judge, Chizoba Oji, adjourned the case until 18 May.
Backstory
Mr Ozekhome’s prosecution in Nigeria stems from a London Tribunal’s judgment that blocked him from claiming a property in North London in September 2025.
In August 2021, Mr Ozekhome sought to transfer the property to his name, claiming it was a gift from a man who presented himself as Tali Shani in appreciation for legal services.
But this was challenged in September 2022 by Westfields Solicitors, claiming to represent “Ms Tali Shani,” who insisted she was the registered owner of the property since 1993 and had never signed any transfer.
Ruling on the dispute, Judge Paton of the UK Tribunal ruled that the house was secretly bought in 1993 by the late Mr Useni, former Nigerian Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, using a false identity.
According to the tribunal, Mr Ozekhome’s steps to claim the property were built on a network of fraud, impersonation, and forged documents. Still, it concluded that the late Mr Useni, former Minister of FCT, was the genuine purchaser of the property in 1993.
Similarly, the London tribunal uncovered fraudulent Nigerian identity records, including a passport, a National Identification Number (NIN), and a Tax Identification Number (TIN) allegedly generated with the connivance of corrupt officials at the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the Immigration Service, and the Federal Inland Revenue Service.
Recently, the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the forfeiture of the property in favour of the Nigerian government, and the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) has initiated steps to recover the property.
