Mr Ozekhome’s defence team took the EFCC witness to task over the findings of his forensic examination of the Tali Shani passport allegedly forged by Mr Ozekhome and his co-defendant.
Senior lawyer Mike Ozekhome’s defence team on Monday grilled a forensic expert brought by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as a prosecution witness to prove forgery nas impersonation charges against Mr Ozekhome and his co-defendant.
The grilling during cross-examination by the defence team at the FCT High Court in Maitama, Abuja, elicited answers from the witness on the technical procedures and the general principles of the probe he conducted into the forgery allegations against the defendants.
The defendants are facing charges of impersonation and forgery of a Nigerian passport presented before a London tribunal by the defendants to support Mr Ozekhome’s failed bid to claim a London property.
The allegedly forged passport, bearing the name Tali Shani, took the centre stage in the second prosecution witness Bamaiyi Mairiga’s testimony on Monday.
Defence lawyer Tayo Oyetibo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), took Mr Mairiga to task over the findings of his forensic examination of the Tali Shani passport.
Mr Oyetibo said the conclusion of another forensic expert stated that Mr Mairiga’s report is a “product of speculation.”
However, Mr Mairiga, an official of the EFCC’s Department of Forensic Examination, denied the allegations.
“No. My report followed the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard for passport issuance among several standards. ICAO has set one of its standards for the authentication of check-digits to ensure accuracy and integrity in international passports, and this standard applies to all ICAO-issued member countries, including Nigeria.
“And if a data-page (for passports) fails such check-digit checks as specified by ICAO, then that data-page is not fit for issuance.”
Mr Mairiga is the second prosecution witness in the alleged forgery case, and his testimony speaks to one of the charges the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) preferred against Mr Ozekhome and his co-defendant, Ponfa Useni.
Mr Useni is the son of the late Jeremiah Useni, who served as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) during the regime of former military dictator, the late Sani Abacha.
The older Mr Useni, who died in January 2025, owned the London property in question under the fictitious name Tali Shani, and his purported attempt to transfer its ownership to Mr Ozekhome allegedly led to the presentation of documents, which the property tribunal in London found to be forged to support the false identities of Tali Shani.
On 27 February, the office of the AGF arraigned Messrs Ozekhome and Mr Useni on 12 counts of forgery and impersonation.
According to the charges, the defendants conspired in 2020 alongside the late Jeremiah Useni, a retired general, and made a false Nigerian passport with number A07535463 and name Tali Shani, supporting it to be issued by the Nigeria Immigration Service, 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. The prosecution said they created a fake “Irrevocable Power of Attorney” to help Mr Ozekhome claim the property.
They denied all the charges.
Mr Oyetibo also insisted during the cross-examination of the witness that his forensic report is a “result of a warped examination of a document.”
While the prosecution lawyer, Aisha Tahir, objected to the line of questioning, which she said was meant to annoy the witness, the trial judge, Chizoba Oji, allowed the question. “I am looking at him (the witness); he does not look annoyed,” the judge said.
Mr Mairiga insisted that his calculations were in line with ICAO standards and the technologies used, including VSC 8000, which was produced by the leading manufacturers of forensic, Foster and Freeman.
The witness also said three technologies were used: Keesing Technologies Document Checker (KTDC), VSC 8000 ICAO Optical Character Recognition (OCR) E-Passport Checker and Manual Publication/Calculation, which could not be wrong.
Earlier during the proceedings, Mr Oyetibo asked the witness about the processes of forensic examination.
He asked the forensic expert if he checked for page substitution.
Mr Mairiga replied that that he carried out the process on the booklets.
He added that the request for the forensic examination of the data page of Tali Shani was for him to “compare the content of the visual inspection and machine-readable zone to determine if they match.”
He added that he did not need to check for page substitution.
Mr Oyetibo asked the witness if he checked for photo replacement, but the witness said “no.”
He explained that the Date of Birth (DOB), Date of Expiry (DOE) and passport number have check digits mathematically encoded to ascertain the genuineness of the data page.
Again, Mr Oyetibo asked if he checked for erasures. He said no, repeating the same reason he gave for the page substitution.
However, the witness noted that he proceeded to the second stage of high-magnification examination and VSC 8000 imaging.
