As they arrived through Manchester Airport, a couple seemed to behave strangely with the baby.
Border Force officials did not sit. One is worried that the relationship between these three is “not real”.
The officer pulled the couple for interrogation. The man, Raphael Ossai, claimed to be the girl's father.
He handed them the birth certificate of the baby, which regarded his travel companion, Oluwakemi Olasanoye, as the mother of the child.
But officials found a second birth certificate, hidden in the lining of the couple's luggage. It named another woman, Raphael's English wife, as the little girl's mother.
This is the beginning of a mystery, unresolved – the little girl's true identity is still not fully known.
What we know is that children have nothing to do with any adult. The girl we call Lucy appears to have been born in rural Nigeria in September 2022, when she was only three days old.
The couple took her to the UK, Ossai and Olasanoye, pleaded guilty to immigration charges and was sentenced to 18 months in prison before being deported.
Lucy has been working in Manchester for nearly two years now. Despite repeated requests from the High Court, the Commission of the Nigerian High Commissioner was not involved in the case.
For the past nine months, the Manchester High Court has been trying to find out who Lucy is, as it determines what her future should be.
A little girl is lost
The court was informed that on June 20, 2023, Ossai and Olasanoye illegally brought Lucy from Lagos to the UK through Addis Ababa. Olasanoye has a visa to work in the UK and has agreed to travel with Ossai and Lucy.
When the couple was sentenced in criminal court, it was believed that Lucy was Osay's child and his Nigerian-born British wife.
Ossai met his British wife in Kenya and married her in Nigeria in 2017 – but he has never been to the UK. When he applied for a visitor visa, he was denied due to his financial situation.
During the sentencing, the judge said that “the main motivation for this crime” was to bring the baby to the UK so that he and his British wife could live with Lucy as a “family”.
However, at a high court hearing, DNA tests proved that Lucy was not related to any adult.
Documents filed with the court said she was born in a young student in rural Nigeria and they were unable to take care of her. Her father didn't know.
The document shows that the mother voluntarily gave up Lucy to the orphanage.
Ossai and his British wife said they had been looking for a little girl to adopt and he collected Lucy when she was a little baby.
The couple has the right to raise the little girl, but don’t adopt her or take her out of Nigeria.
Music producer Ossai took Lucy to a small apartment in Lagos, and over the next nine months he took care of her.
He told the court that he took good care of the baby – he had fed her properly, played her music and kept her safe.
But social workers from Cafcass, a consulting service for children and family courts, said she believes Lucy was ignored, underestimated and stimulated.
In October 2023, she met this little girl when she was just one year old.
“It was really sad when I met her,” a social worker told the court.
She said it seemed as if the child hadn't realized “she was actually a person.”
She added: “She was so lost and not really present…she just felt lonely, but she was surrounded by people.”
During an observation meeting, social workers said Lucy became very “panic” when her foster caregiver stood up and left the room.
She also showed an “extreme crying” that “it's hard to soothe”.
When asked if Lucy could have been traumatized by the flight or was transferred by her care, social workers said she didn’t think it could be blamed solely on Lucy.
She added that if Lucy develops a safe attachment to Ossai, it will be transferred to her foster caregiver.
The judge said the child lacked “basic parental attachment” but did not find the reason.
“I'm sure she was brought into this country illegally, so separation from her caregivers was an important factor,” he said.
“We see her as our daughter”
Although Ossai was sentenced to deportation, he and his British wife asked the High Court to assess their care for Lucy.
Ossai said he thought Lucy was his daughter. His lawyer said that the British court had no right to take her away because Nigerian authorities had approved him as a foster parent.
Lucy has always been happy with him, and he thinks he is unhappy to take care of her, especially by placing her with a white foster caregiver.
“White people might be strange to her,” he added. “I saw the way she looked at them when they took her away from me.”
His attorney expressed concern that if Lucy was adopted by a white family, she would lose her cultural identity.
Ossai's British wife said Lucy “like the kind of precious gift I really wanted”.
She told the High Court that she would do “anything” for her, adding: “I see her as my child”.
They both cried in court as they talked about the little girl.
Lucy's best chance
High Court Judge Sir Jonathan Cohen, who tried the case, rejected the application of Ossai and his British wife to assess for care for Lucy.
He said the lies they told and the actions they took, especially moving Lucy from Nigeria to Nigeria, “inevitably caused her very significant emotional harm.”
Lucy was placed with several different foster care workers and since she arrived in the UK, she has lived at least at least her third new home. In April, the judge ordered her to be placed in the UK and changed her name.
Lucy “needs to have the best chance in the world”, he said, and that it can only be done “only in alternative families.”
The judge added that she will receive a “background” about her legacy and tell her what happened in the past.
He discovers that Ossai and his British wife are really eager to adopt Lucy.
Julian Bild, immigration attorney for the anti-trafficking charity Atleu, said that in situations where women are British nationals and women are British nationals by adoption or otherwise, it is very likely that families can stay here.
He said that if a child is taken to the UK and undergoes physical adoption, it is possible to obtain British citizenship.
But he added, “Nigerians can simply adopt children to improve their immigration status and escape it is very, very, very, because that would be very transparent”.
“A person seeking to bring children to the UK needs to first obtain proof of qualification from the UK government before they can qualify.
“The authenticity of all this happening is clearly being taken by family courts, social workers and experts very carefully to ensure that arrangements are in the best interests of the child.”
The Home Office said it was unable to comment on individual cases and therefore could not clarify whether Ossai and Olasanoye had been evacuated from the UK.
A spokesman for the Home Ministry said: “There is no doubt that foreign nationals who commit crimes will do everything we can to ensure that they cannot roam freely in the streets of Britain, including evacuating them from Britain as early as possible.
“We have removed 3,594 foreign criminals since the election, an increase of 16% in the same period in the same period.”
The Nigeria High Commission did not respond to our request for comment.
