₦airaland Forum

Court hears Nigerian Jayeola Abiola agreed to pay £5,000 for the sham marriage so he could get a visa to stay in the UK.

A bogus couple whose sham marriage was scuppered after the bride could not remember the groom’s name have been jailed. Jayeola Abiola, 27, a Nigerian national, barely knew his would-be wife Vania Pinheiro-Fernandes, 29, from Portugal. They planned to walk down the aisle to the ballad The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face – a choice Hull crown court heard was “rather apt”.

Abiola agreed to pay £5,000 for the sham marriage so he could get a visa to stay in the UK, the court heard.

But the ceremony at Hull’s Guildhall was halted because a registrar became suspicious that Fernandes struggled with basic questions about her purported partner, and tipped off immigration officers.

David Bradshaw, prosecuting, said Abiola entered Britain legitimately as a student at Hull University but his visa expired in January 2013 – two months after the ceremony.

He handed over large sums of cash to an organiser, who is due to be sentenced at a later hearing. The organiser roped in Fernandes and gave her his ex-wife’s passport so she could register under a false name.

Bradshaw told the court: “Because the defendant Abiola knew that his visa was to expire, he wished to continue staying in this country and he arranged to raise the sum of £5,000 and to use that money for an arrangement called a sham marriage.

“Had it happened in the normal way of things, he would have been able to stay in the UK.”

Judge Gurdial Singh said a custodial sentence for both defendants was “inevitable” as he jailed Abiola for 12 months and Fernandes for eight months.

http://www.kabibi.com/lates-news/latest-news/12411-nigerian-student-in-uk-jailed-as-confused-bride-forgot-grooms-name-in-fake-marriage-plot.html