NIS Accused of Issuing Duplicate Passport to CEO in N500m Fraud

A major institutional scandal has hit the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) following revelations that a second valid international passport was issued to a real estate developer, Rebecca Omokamo Godwin-Isaac, while her original passport was in judicial custody as part of her bail conditions for an ongoing ₦500 million fraud trial.

Godwin-Isaac, the Chief Executive Officer of Homadil Realty Limited, is currently facing prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) before Justice Joyce Obehi Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja. As a core condition of her bail, the court had ordered her international passport to be seized and held by the court registry to prevent her from leaving the country.

However, official travel logs and immigration data reveal that Godwin-Isaac visited an immigration office on February 15, 2025, where she was captured and issued a new passport (No. B51450551) expiring in 2035. Security tracking shows she subsequently used this parallel passport to travel to Rwanda, Dubai, and London, effectively bypassing airport security checkpoints and the federal “no-fly” list.

In a formal petition addressed to the Comptroller-General of the NIS and the Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, prominent legal practitioner Olumide Olujimi (SAN) demanded an immediate ministerial panel of inquiry into the matter. The petition alleges a systemic conspiracy within the NIS, noting that the suspect’s electronic signature appeared to have been superimposed onto the new document, bypassing active litigation flags, security alerts, and biometric cross-referencing systems.

The defense lawyer noted that Godwin-Isaac’s original passport (No. B00485650), which remains valid until August 2026, was securely held by authorities when the new one was processed. This left the fraud suspect holding two separate, valid Nigerian passports simultaneously in direct violation of the Immigration Act of 2015.

Adding to the pressure, human rights attorney Maxwell Opara, representing the Initiative Against Human Rights Abuse and Torture (INAHURAT), called for a comprehensive forensic audit of the immigration database. Opara urged federal prosecutors to immediately seek the revocation of the defendant’s bail, arguing that procuring a second travel document to evade oversight constitutes a severe breach of court orders and an obstruction of justice.

The underlying criminal trial involves a multi-count charge against Godwin-Isaac, her husband, and their corporate entities. The EFCC alleges that the defendants defrauded multiple victims of over ₦500 million by cloning Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS) land titles, forging a police report, and falsifying Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) documents to illegally sell luxury plots in Abuja’s high-brow Guzape and Katampe districts.

Civil society groups have described the development as a significant test for institutional accountability and the integrity of Nigeria’s border-control networks, calling for the immediate international blacklisting of the illegally issued document through INTERPOL systems.