A Nigerian Home Office worker ‘married’ his own daughter to get her a British
visa, The extraordinary scam was apparently executed by Jelili Adesanya while
ministers turned a blind eye.Mr Adesanya, 54, has lived here for more than 30
years and holds a British passport, but wanted his daughter, her husband and
their four sons to join him from Nigeria.He faked a wedding ceremony complete
with a photograph of the happy ‘couple’ which helped fool immigration officials
that his daughter, Karimotu Adenike, was really his wife.
Miss Adenike, who is in her mid-30s, was duly granted
permission to live in the UK.The pair are waiting for her to be granted a
permanent right to remain before they undergo a quiet divorce and attempt to
bring the rest of her family here.It is expected she would try to remarry her
real husband to get them all visas.But despite being tipped off two years ago,
the Home Office seems to have done nothing to stop the scam by one of their own
workers.Until recently, Mr Adesanya was employed as an occupational health
nurse for the Home Office, working with immigration officials at Gatwick
airport.A whistleblower sent letters to the High Commission in Lagos and the UK
Border Agency including specific details such as names, addresses, passport
numbers and even a copy of the wedding photograph.When there was no response,
he sent emails to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and ministers Vernon Coaker
and Phil Woolas on February 1 this year. He heard nothing.
Mr Adesanya, who came to Britain in 1976, flew back to Nigeria
on May 29, 2007, and held the bogus wedding ceremony a few days later at a
register office in Ikorodu, Lagos.A source said: ‘They paid people to attend
the wedding so that the British High Commission in Lagos would believe it was
genuine. The commission then gave Karimotu Adenike a two-year settlement visa
in October 2007.‘On her settlement visa application form, of course, she did
not mention that she already had a husband and four children.‘The date of birth
on her Nigerian passport is not her real date of birth.’Miss Adenike is
believed to have aged herself by ten years on her wedding certificate to
disguise the age gap with her father.Although her settlement visa expired last
month, she is hoping to be given the right to remain.David Burrowes, the Conservative
MP for Enfield Southgate and Shadow Justice Minister, was also tipped off by
the whistleblower and wrote to the Home Office.
This time there was a reply, but it said that although the
matter was ‘under investigation’, no further information would be provided
because it could ‘breach of our obligations under the Data Protection Act’.Mr Burrowes told the Mail: ‘I am very surprised and
concerned that no action appears to have been taken, because the allegations
are extremely serious.’Mr Adesanya, who lives with his daughter in Dagenham,
Essex, vehemently denied the plot and said he had never been questioned about
the allegations.He said: ‘Married my own daughter? I have never heard anything
like this in my life. I deny it. She is my wife, not my daughter.’
However,
asked to confirm his ‘wife’s’ date of birth, he said he did not know without
checking her passport, and refused to allow her to speak for herself.Unbeknown
to him, his daughter had confirmed the arrangement when she told a friend she
would shortly apply for her own British passport and ‘divorce daddy’.Last night
Jonathan Sedgwick, from the UK Border Agency, said: ‘These individuals are
already under investigation, and I want to make it clear that abuse of our
immigration laws will not be tolerated.‘If we identify marriages which we believe are not genuine,
we will challenge them and prosecute where appropriate.‘We are determined to
send home any foreign nationals convicted of these types of crimes once they
have served their sentences.’
