Obasi Anurika Anita, who hails from Ebonyi State, has been in the employ of the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS), a department responsible for land records under the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), since 2009, using a fake university certificate, and has advanced to Grade Level 13.
According to a copy of her employment letter dated August 17, 2011, obtained by FIJ, she is now addressed as Odom Anurika Anita. Her husband is a brother of Chuka Odom, Nigeria’s Minister of State for the FCT between 2009 and October 2010.
Employed as Administrative Officer II, her entry-level position was Grade Level 08 Step 2. According to The Punch, such an officer in the federal civil service earns N2,182,637 annually.
FIJ learnt that she claimed to have studied Political and Administrative Studies, a four-year course, at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, from the 2005/2006 session and graduated in 2008 when Don Baridam was the school’s vice chancellor.
In actuality, Anita secured her original study spot in 2002, and a matriculation identity number U2000/2540272 was issued to her as a student of Educational Foundation in the Faculty of Education. Six years later, precisely in 2006, Anita had managed a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 1.8.
Typically, one can study a four-year course in any Nigerian higher institution for six years under extenuating conditions. Such an extension usually applies to someone having spill-over courses, on health grounds or any such condition as deemed fit by the authorities.
‘SHAM MARRIAGE TO DUBAI’
Njoku Ifeanyichukwu, an Abuja resident and Anita’s kinsman, revealed that Anita was in Dubai between 2004 and 2006, precisely one year and six months.
She had arranged a wedding with an Igbo man known as “Dangana”, who grew up in the North. They travelled to Dubai together, abandoning her studentship at the university.
“Her parents, based in Ebonyi State, were unaware of the wedding. She rented people who posed as her parents and had a traditional wedding done in Owerri,” said Ifeanyichukwu.
“They came back to Lagos after the wedding. She abandoned her studies and left for Dubai with the man. There, Dangana was using her for criminal activities like spiking people’s drinks at clubs and then robbing them of their valuables.”
In the middle of 2006, Anita returned to Nigeria without Dangana. All this information about the arranged wedding was unknown to the Abuja resident and his family until Dangana showed up at their Ikeja residence in Lagos State with some police officers.
Ifeanyichukwu’s family and Anita’s are related. He is a cousin of hers.
“The story of their activities came to our knowledge because she accused the man of rape in Dubai and he was arrested. She parked all his properties and fled to Nigeria,” Ifeanyichukwu explained.
“In the same 2006, Dangana was jailed and served out his sentencing. And he also came back to Nigeria and reported Anita at Zone 2 Police Headquarters, Onikan, Lagos.
“He brought some policemen to our house, saying that we must produce Anita. Unknown to us, Anita had told her fake husband that our house was her family house. That was what made him locate us with the officers.
“I was arrested and taken to Zone 2. Dangana insisted my family must produce her. My mother showed the police our family pictures to show that Anita was not her child. Many people testified at the station that Anita was not our family member but we are just related. I was later released on the same day.”
THE DISCOVERY
Years later, Ifeanyichukwu learnt that Anita was working with a government institution but had no idea which institution it was. He said when people asked about where she worked, she would say NNPC or Federal Ministry of Finance, among others.
Eventually, he got a hold of information that her place of work was the FCTA.
“I then hired a private investigator in 2022 to write a letter to the university to find out if she actually completed her programme. The school’s response was that she ‘failed out’,” Ifeanyichukwu added.
“The school gave us the full information. The certificate she is currently parading is dated the same year she failed out, which we have verified to be fake.”
A September 19, 2022, response reads, “…we wish to confirm that the above-named, whose Matriculation Number is also stated, was a student of the University of Port Harcourt. Details of her studentship were as follows:”
The Freedom of Information Act allows citizens to request public information from public agencies holding such information even without declaring their motivation.
But Ifeanyichukwu thought going through the court would make more sense. In 2024, he approached the Federal High Court in Abuja presided over by Justice BFM Nyako for three prayers, including “to apply for an order of Certiorari for the purpose of mandating the 1st Respondent [FCTA] to produce the academic records, certificate and NYSC Discharge Certificate upon which the 3rd Respondent [Anita] was employed in its establishment”.
FCTA was sued as the first respondent, the university as the second and Anita as the third. The first respondent, represented by a lawyer, confirmed to the court that she was its staff member. Through document exchange, FIJ’s source accessed the fake certificate with which she started her civil service career.
Efforts to get an original certificate issued by the university in 2008 were unsuccessful. But a look at this certificate issued to Kayode Fagbegi, a microbiology graduate in 2013, during the administration of the same vice chancellor, disclosed a similarity with the fake certificate, particularly in text and font type.
One major difference, however, was that the course name in Anita’s fake certificate was underlined while the course name in the original one was not. It was also observed that the vice chancellor’s signature was overlapping Anita’s signature.
The school did not respond to a public record request emailed to Registrar Gloria Chindah via her official email address by FIJ on December 18. When followed up with a text message, she said the university had closed for the 2025 Christmas holidays and would resume on January 12, 2026.
‘NAME YOUR PRICE’
With the matter now in court, Ifeanyichukwu also revealed that Nana John Okonkwo, a lawyer representing the FCTA and Anita, had told him in confidence to name his price to “kill the case”.
Ifeanyichukwu refused to yield to the unholy pressure.
“The FCTA lawyer met with me sometime ago, accepted that Anita’s certificate was fake and asked me to name my price to kill the case,” Ifeanyichukwu told FIJ.
“I told him to give me time so that I would get my lawyer involved and know why they are asking me for an out-of-court settlement. Along the line, they arrested me in front of the court and took me to Suleja Prison.
“The police even told me that if I do this case for 10 years, nothing would come out. It was not a small issue. They used many people to muzzle me. The police arraigned me before a Gwagwalada Magistrate’s Court that I claimed that I forged documents to claim that she working in one school when she was not working there.”
Okonkwo refused to respond to FIJ’s specific questions via WhatsApp on December 15. Instead, she said the claims were “are complete fabrications, malicious lies, and a deliberate attempt to drag my name into a contrived scandal”.
Threatening court action if FIJ contacts her again, Okonkwo wrote, “You are hereby ordered to cease and desist immediately and permanently from contacting me in any form whatsoever. This includes telephone calls, text messages, social media, third parties, intermediaries, or any other channel, whether now or in the future.”
The lawyer said that this was a “final notice”.
“Proceed at your own peril,” she added.
The police had left the woman gaming the system and spent its resources hounding the whistleblower. They were arguing that he lied that she was working where she was not. Meanwhile, it was the private investigator who devised that strategy to be able to find out from the university whether she truly completed her studies there.
“When the investigator called her, she mentioned NNPC as her place of work. She did not know she was on record. So the investigator deployed that strategy to get to know the status of her affiliation with the university,” said Ifeanyichukwu.
The whistleblower said he signed a non-disclosure agreement with the private investigator. So, FIJ’s request to interview him for this story was rejected.
An enquiry was also sent to Anita on December 15, but she declined to comment, referring FIJ to her lawyer because “the matter is in court”.
