The OAP Dotun Kayode has accused the US embassy in Nigeria of aiding his estranged wife’s elopement with his two daughters.
In 2021, Dotun’s now-estranged wife, Taiwo Omotayo Oyebanjo, who is sister to a famed record producer in Nigeria, filed for divorce.
She had alleged domestic violence, emotional abuse, and a forced abortion, which Dotun had consistently denied.
Dotun, in his counterclaims, had stated that his wife and her family started hindering his access to their daughters.
Taiwo had maintained that Dotun knew the children’s location and that her actions were to protect her daughters from abuse.
The ensuing custody battle, which ended their nearly decade-long marriage, resulted in both parties trading accusations on social media.
Dotun continued to raise the alarm that his right to see his children was being denied, even after a court had granted divided custody.
The OAP, in multiple social media posts, later disclosed that his estranged wife took their children out of the country without his knowledge, significantly complicating his efforts to see them and making the custody struggle an international matter.
On November 29, Dotun presented fresh allegations, calling attention to the US embassy’s role in the dramatic turn of his custody dispute.
In a barrage of posts, he accused the embassy of flouting a court order and aiding what he has described as international child abduction.
Dotun said his estranged wife unlawfully removed their two children from Nigeria and took them to the US three years ago without his consent, despite an active divorce and custody case at a federal high court.
He claimed to have had the children’s original passports and that a court order prevented the children from being taken out of the jurisdiction.
He said the US embassy issued new passports to his American-citizen children without his consent, his presence, or a fair hearing, thereby enabling what he terms the “kidnapping” of his daughters.
Dotun demanded accountability from the embassy, specifically calling out the former consular-general, Mary Beth Leonard, for what he believes was a compromised and biased process that facilitated his ex-wife’s actions.
He argued that even though the children are US citizens, the mother is not, and the issuance of new passports without his required consent and in contravention of a local court order signalled the embassy’s failure to protect the rights of a non-American father.
Dotun said the US embassy issued new passports, a process that typically requires the consent of both parents or documentation of sole custody (Form DS-3053 or DS-5525).
“Be assured, papers were most likely forged, or games played,” he claimed in part.
“The American embassy in Nigeria is an enabler of child abduction. Very biased. No proper investigation.
“They destroy families and do not protect kids. I have written for years and kept quiet for 3 years. It’s time. I have realised you all think you uphold a fair system, but you are very unfair.”
The OAP asked the embassy to either provide his children or offer him a fair explanation for how their strict two-parent consent policy was circumvented, thus enabling what he terms international parental child abduction.
As of this reporting, the US embassy in Nigeria has yet to publicly address these allegations.
Nigeria has been battling a surge in mass abductions of school children across its north-west and north-central regions.
On November 17, some gunmen struck a girls’ secondary school in Kebbi, abducting 25 girls and killing the school’s vice-principal.
On November 21, armed men again attacked a Catholic school in the Papiri community of Niger, abducting 315 students and teachers.
More localised attacks have been recorded since then, with the federal government forced to shut down schools at scale.
These have generated a heated national debate, political tension, and a diplomatic firestorm, with numerous public figures weighing in.
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