BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
A Nigerian-born lady, June Ashimola has appeared in a UK court to disprove claims of her death and reveal she’s alive, ending a nearly six-year probate wrangle.
Ashimola had been declared dead in 2019, without leaving a will, according to Mirror, a UK-based news publication.
Her £350,000 estate was granted to Ruth Samuel on behalf of a man named Bakare Lasisi, who had reportedly married Ashimola in 1993.
People began questioning the authenticity of Ashimola’s death certificate and questioning if she was indeed dead when she was seen in her home country, Nigeria.
Samuel and Lasisi shrugged it off, with the thought that someone was parading as her in the West African country.
Although she could not be physically present in the UK court due to visa restrictions, she appeared in a video where she showed a copy of her international passport that recently expired.
The presiding judge, John Linwood noted that the case was “an unusual probate claim in that the deceased says she is very much alive”.
Linwood added that Ashimola’s death certificate could not be confirmed as genuine “to the necessary standard in that only a copy was produced. The provenance was unknown. There was no evidence before me that it was a genuine document evidencing a real event.”
Questions about her marriage to Lasisi were also raised in court.
The judge also noted that Ashimola had never been married to Lasisi and that the marriage certificate was “a concocted or fraudulent document”.
According to him, it was unclear whether Lasisi even existed, he added, saying that even if Lasisi was a real person, he was not likely to be aware that his identity was being used.
investigation linked the probate claim to one Tony Ashikodi.
Ashikodi has been jailed for three years in 1996 for obtaining property by deception.
Linwood revealed that it was clear that Ashikodi had “orchestrated” the fake claim to her property.
