EXCLUSIVE: Serial Divorcee: Reno Omokri Petitioned A California Court To Annul His Marriage To Second Wife Pamela White, Got Divorced Third Time By Shakeila Mitchell In The Same County, And In 2025 US Court Gave His First Wife Tuokpe Onuwaje Sole Authority Of Their Son

The American family record of Bemigho Reno Omokri sits in one courthouse in Contra Costa County, California, in three proceedings spread across nineteen years, and it has never been reported. SecretsReporters has assembled the three proceedings whole, and together they show a marriage the holder petitioned a court to erase as if it had never existed, a second marriage ended by a wife whose summons he never answered, and a son placed by court order under the sole authority of his mother, in a case where the name of the father appears nowhere.

Omokri, former spokesman to President Goodluck Jonathan, author and preacher whose public teaching holds that marriage is for one man and one wife for life, lived in Antioch, in Contra Costa County, with Tuokpe Onuwaje, whom he married in Nigeria on 12 June 2004 in traditional and church ceremonies, and with their three children.

The Marriage He Asked A Court To Erase

On 8 May 2006, in the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa, at Martinez, a family case was filed under the name Bemigho Reno Omokri. The case, numbered MSD06-02147, was his own Petition for Nullity against Pamela Marshea White, asking the court to declare his marriage to Pamela Marshea White invalid from its beginning. He filed the petition himself, without a lawyer, and the court granted his application to waive its fees on the same day.

White filed her response to the petition on 5 June 2006, her own fees waived as well, and an appearance, stipulation and waivers followed on 7 June 2006. On 29 August 2006, at a hearing in Department 186, the court granted the nullity. The Final Judgment for Nullity was filed that day, and notice of entry of judgment was mailed to the parties. The public register of the case does not state the ground on which Omokri asked the court to erase the marriage.

The Wife Who Says She Was Never Divorced

The nullity came one year after the marriage the public knows had been pronounced dead in Lagos. A decree of the Lagos High Court dissolved the marriage of Omokri and Onuwaje on 25 August 2005 for irreconcilable differences. Onuwaje has never accepted that ending. Published investigations in 2021 recorded her position that she and Omokri remained legally married, and in September 2024 she accused him publicly of violence in the marriage, of a slap that left her jaw swollen, of a ruptured eardrum that left blood on her pillow, and of a final assault that made her involve the police. She spoke after Omokri praised the Ethiopian woman he now calls his wife, Hanna, as a woman who does not know how to quarrel.

Against those accusations stands one American official record. A letter of the Contra Costa County Children and Family Services dated 28 August 2018 closed an investigated allegation of physical abuse against Omokri as inconclusive, the children reporting no safety concerns in his care.

The Divorce He Never Answered

On 20 January 2009, the same Martinez courthouse received a second family case carrying his name, and this time he stood as the respondent. Shakeila Mitchell filed a petition for dissolution of her marriage to Bemigho Omokri, case number MSD09-00290, a dissolution without children. Her application to waive court fees was denied in full on the day of filing, and her first paper fee of $350 was received on 5 February 2009.

Omokri was personally served with the petition on 29 January 2009. He filed no response. On 17 July 2009 the clerk entered his default as requested, the Final Judgment for Dissolution was filed the same day in the department of Judge John C. Cope, and the register of the court records the end of that marriage in its own words: marital status ends 07/30/09.

The Son Placed Beyond His Name

The third proceeding opened on 27 February 2025 in the probate department of the same court, and it concerns a son of the Onuwaje marriage. Tuokpe Onuwaje petitioned the court, in case number P25-00346, for her appointment as limited conservator of the person of Oritsematosan David Bemigho, one of the three children of her marriage to Omokri, a son described in published accounts as a special needs child.

The court appointed a lawyer, Randolph Stein, to represent the young man, received the report of its own investigator and the assessment of the Regional Center of the East Bay, and heard the petition on 9 July 2025, 5 September 2025 and 5 November 2025. On 7 November 2025 the court issued its Order Appointing Conservator: a limited conservatorship of the person, with no bond, carrying all seven powers California law lists for a limited conservator under section 2351.5(b) of the Probate Code.

In the whole of that proceeding, from the petition of 27 February 2025 to the order of 7 November 2025, the name of the father appears nowhere. The court directed notice of the hearings to the sister of the conservatee, Oritsetsolayemi Janelle Bemigho, and to his grandmother, Ayo Onuwaje. The parties the court listed are the mother as petitioner and conservator, the sister as interested party, and Oritsematosan David Bemigho as conservatee. Bemigho Reno Omokri, who annulled one marriage in that courthouse in 2006 and was divorced in it by default in 2009, is not in the file of his own son.