What started as an act of faith during the COVID-19 pandemic has become one of Nigeria’s most contentious custody disputes; pitting a US-based pastor with legal adoption documents against the lawyer he trusted to care for his child.
At the center of it all is Baby Jada Pender, an orphan from Abia State.
Pastor Godstime Pender leads the Streams of Joy Church in Houston, Texas. He and his wife Joyce are Nigerian nationals who split their time between the United States and Abia State. The couple already had three biological children but chose to expand their family through adoption. 
Through the Ministry of Women Affairs in Abia State, they began the process of adopting Baby Jada, an orphan who had been abandoned at birth in Abia State. In July 2020, a Family Court in Umuahia, Abia State, finalised the adoption. The Ministry of Women Affairs documented the process, and the Penders were, by every legal measure, Jada’s parents.
The Arrangement That Changed Everything
The adoption was completed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. With international borders closed and flights suspended, the Penders couldn’t bring Jada to Houston immediately. Through a US-based pastor who knew both parties, they contacted Ms. Timipre Wolo, a prominent lawyer based in Abuja, to care for Jada temporarily while travel restrictions remained in place.
The arrangement was clear: Ms. Wolo would take Jada ‘on trust’ as a caregiver until the Penders could travel and bring their daughter home.
This was meant to be a temporary solution, but it developed into a six-year dispute.
When the Caregiver Refused to Return the Child
When borders reopened and the Penders moved to finalise Jada’s immigration to the United States, they asked for their daughter back, but Ms. Wolo refused.
She told the couple and the pastor who had arranged the agreement that she had grown deeply attached to Jada over the years. Rather than return the child, she went to the FCT High Court in Abuja and filed to revoke the Penders’ adoption and seek custody of Jada herself. The pastor who had acted as the bridge between both parties now found himself named in the legal dispute he had helped create.
The Refusal: When Caregiver Became Claimant
For the past two years, the case has moved through the Nigerian court system with both sides presenting fundamentally different accounts of what is right and what is best for Jada.
The Penders point to documents (the 2020 Family Court adoption order, the Ministry of Women Affairs records) and argue that Ms. Wolo was never anything more than a temporary caregiver. The pandemic delayed their ability to bring Jada home, but it didn’t constitute abandonment. Their legal rights as parents, they argue, were never in question.
Ms. Wolo’s position is built around a different set of facts. She has been Jada’s primary caregiver since infancy. She provided shelter, nourishment, and consistent parental presence during the most formative years of the child’s life. She has alleged irregularities in the original adoption process and argues that removing Jada from the only home she has known, to go and live with people who have been physically absent for most of her life, would cause serious harm to the child.
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Court Orders That Haven’t Been Obeyed
In 2024, Nigerian courts sided with the Penders. Court orders were issued affirming their adoption rights and directing that Jada be released to them, but Jada was still not released.
Ms. Wolo has denied the Penders access to their daughter and has declined to comply with the court orders. The case has now escalated to the Supreme Court of Nigeria, where it remains active. A court ordered a reunification, and that order wasn’t obeyed. The practical reality is that the Penders have a legal victory on paper but no daughter in their arms.
Jada is now about eight years old. She has spent most of her life with Ms. Wolo, separated from the parents and three siblings she was legally adopted into.
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The Questions This Case Raises
Beyond the legal specifics, the Baby Jada case has raised questions that the Nigerian legal and child welfare systems have not fully answered.
Can a temporary caregiver override a legal adoption by claiming emotional attachment built over years of physical presence; especially when that caregiver is a lawyer who understands the law? When a court issues orders in a custody matter and they are defied, what enforcement mechanisms actually exist? And in a dispute where both sides claim to be acting in the best interest of a child; who is actually listening to the child?
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