In a quiet street in north London, a tale of fraud, forged identities, and shadowy ownership emerges around a seemingly ordinary house on Randall Avenue. What started as a simple property claim has become an investigative dossier on how powerful Nigerian public figures hide their wealth.
The story begins on November 16, 1993, when the property was registered in the name of “Tali Shani.” Except “Tali Shani”, investigations later confirmed, was a pseudonym used by a Nigerian military bigwig in the purchase deal. His name is Jeremiah Useni, a General who served as a powerful minister under the Nigerian military Head of State, General Sani Abacha’s regime. Tali Shani was a variation of Useni’s known nickname “Tali”.
Useni, a popular figure within Nigeria’s elite, who also served as Senator under Nigeria’s current democratic transition, was long suspected of building a global property empire through questionable means, with cash flows that raised eyebrows in several investigations. The Randall Avenue house was just one piece of his sprawling, hidden portfolio.
He was said to have used the pseudonym to mask his ownership. This is a tactic consistent with a history of financial opacity among Nigeria’s political elite. These underhand tactics have been documented in the Pandora Papers and earlier investigations by the Centre for Public Integrity, but Useni is not mentioned in any of these.
However, investigators followed trails that led to Useni’s hidden wealth through Jersey Financial Records, which showed that Useni held four accounts at Standard Chartered’s Jersey branch, seized in prior probes into Abacha-era funds. In 2022, the Jersey court rejected his £2 million recovery bid, citing his “significant assets.”
This paper trail confirmed his covert control, showing how he used his political influence to amass and conceal assets abroad. This is a common practice among Nigeria’s elite, as highlighted in an analysis done by Finance Uncovered of offshore property purchases.
The property had remained hidden from the public for years until in 2019 when a well-known Nigerian lawyer and human rights advocate, Mike Ozekhome, entered the scene. The lawyer claimed ownership through a power of attorney granted by a man identifying himself as “Mr. Tali Shani,” who claimed to represent the registered proprietor.
The power of attorney, executed on May 28, 2020, and followed by a property transfer on August 17, 2021, declared no monetary value, raising immediate red flags. The popular lawyer’s involvement is particularly striking given his reputation as a figure in Nigeria’s legal and political reform efforts, yet here he was entangled in a case that would unravel as an allegedly fraudulent scheme.
Opposition came from another individual also named “Tali Shani,” but this time a female, who filed an objection at the Land Registry on September 26, 2022, asserting her ownership. However, she never appeared in court, and her identity documents were proven to be forgeries. The tribunal, during hearings on June 11-12, 2024, found her claims implausible. It also noted contradictions in the narrative presented by “Mr. Tali Shani.”
The plot thickened when, in October 2024, documents claimed “Ms. Tali Shani” had died on October 3, 2024, a fabrication, as the tribunal later ruled she never existed. A new claimant emerged in the form of a “Mr. Ayodele Damola,” alleging to be her son.
Damola claimed that his “mother” purchased the property in 1993 while in a relationship with Useni. He further alleged the attempted transfer to Ozekhome was to repay a N54 million loan Useni owed the lawyer for an election campaign. He was supported by a “cousin,” Anakwe Obasi, and a solicitor, Efemuai.
Useni had appeared via video in June, 2024, and asserted his ownership, stating that he owned the property. This claim was sadly cut short when the General died of natural causes in France on January 23, leaving the case in limbo.
On September 11, the First-tier Tribunal delivered its decision in the case of Tali Shani v Chief Mike Agbedor Abu Ozekhome [2025] UKFTT 1090 (PC)), after closing submissions on September 2. The ruling was decisive. “Ms. Tali Shani” never existed, “Mr. Tali Shani” did not purchase the property in 1993, and the true buyer was the General under a false name.
Both the lawyer and Damola’s applications to register the 2021 transfer were rejected, with the court finding evidence of identity theft and fraud by all parties involved.
The tribunal explicitly ruled that Useni registered the property under the false name “Ms. Tali Shani,” describing her as a “fictitious creation” to hide his involvement. The tactic allowed the property to remain legally in her name, in spite of the court’s findings. The ruling rejected competing ownership claims, including that from Ozekhome, on grounds of identity theft and fraud, affirming Useni as the “real purchaser using a false name.”
In fact, Judge Ewan Paton, who presided over the tribunal, said Ozekhome had “recruited his son, a young lawyer, to invent and contrive evidence to produce a charlatan to take over the property of General Useni who he said was his friend and client.”
With the General’s death, the property technically remains registered to “Tali Shani,” a non-existent entity, leaving it in a legal limbo with no rightful owner.
The case is not isolated. It gives an insight into a larger trend. The Pandora Papers revealed that 137 wealthy Nigerians, including popular politicians, funnelled over £1.5 million into London properties using offshore companies between 2010 and 2015, a period that was particularly marked by allegations of rampant corruption.
The General’s property acquisitions, as noted by the Centre for Public Integrity, spanned Nigeria and beyond, built on a foundation of questionable means during his military tenure. The popular lawyer’s involvement, despite his public persona, suggests the pervasive nature of such schemes, even among respected figures. The use of fake identities and forged documents in this dispute echoes tactics exposed in the Panama Papers and FinCEN Files, where Nigerian elites obscured wealth to evade scrutiny.
Lanre Suraju of the Human and Environmental Development Agenda aptly remarked on the irony of such outflows from a nation struggling with basic infrastructure, underscoring the global impact of these illicit financial flows.
The house on Randall Avenue stands as a symbol of unresolved greed and deception. With its legal owner a fiction and its claimants discredited, the property’s future remains uncertain. Will it revert to the state or be claimed by distant heirs? Some also ask if it will become a cautionary tale in international property law.
Anit-corruption advocates say this bizarre saga highlights the need for stricter oversight of offshore wealth and the vulnerabilities in systems that allow such disputes to fester. For now, the house without an actual owner remains a ghost in the legal landscape. Its story is a testament to the complexities of global corruption.
