The ongoing will suit challenging the claim to the estate of the late billionaire businessman Jacques Roomans by his son, Mr. Simon Roomans, before Justice Adedayo Oyebanji of a Lagos High Court, reached a climax when Simon, the first claimant, gave his testimony.
In his detailed witness statement on oath, dated June 13, 2025, and adopted as evidence in court on November 20, Simon deposed that Ms. Maria Mahat took advantage of his father’s deteriorating mental health to influence him to act out of character and in accordance with her wishes.
He further told the court that any marriage purportedly entered into between his father and Mahat, prior to the official date of his parents’ divorce on January 22, 2021, was null and void. According to Simon, his father’s relationship with Mahat directly led to the breakdown of his relationship with his mother, their separation, and eventual divorce.
To support his claims, Simon Roomans tendered volumes of documents, mostly extracted from emails and other records from his father’s companies, totaling about 50 gigabytes of data contained in a flash drive. He said the material was sent to him by one of his father’s closest aides and former employees, Mike Luger.
Counsel to the defendants challenged the admissibility of Simon’s evidence, arguing that it was unreliable. The first and second days of hearing were spent tendering these voluminous documents and debating their admissibility.
Lead counsel to the defendants, Mrs. Funke Adekoya, SAN, objected to the documents, describing them as “hearsay evidence” under the Evidence Act, as they did not originate directly from the maker or receiver. Counsel for the third and fourth defendants, Etigwe Uwa, SAN, and Adeyinka Aderemi, SAN, aligned with her position.
Countering this, counsel to the claimant, Dr. Babatunde Ajibade, SAN, argued that the documents were indeed tenable as evidence. After reviewing the submissions, the trial judge ruled that all documents were admissible and they were formally admitted into evidence.
During cross-examination, Adekoya, SAN, highlighted Simon’s physical absence from his father as indicative of a gap in their relationship. Simon, though born in Nigeria, had left the country at age nine to attend boarding school in the United Kingdom and had not seen his father since 2015.
Simon, however, maintained that his relationship with his father remained cordial until Mahat’s involvement, stating that they were always in touch via telephone. He cited several occasions when his father created positions for him in his companies, which he discharged creditably, and noted that his father visited him in his workplaces, including in China, and that both parents attended his wedding in Australia.
Uwa, SAN, counsel for Mahat, continued the cross-examination, asserting that the gap in the relationship between Simon and his father was not caused by Mahat. Aderemi, SAN, representing the fourth defendant, questioned Simon on whether he had dementia, to which he answered in the negative.
Previously, statements from Mr. Rakesh Lal, Project Manager of Sea Trucks Group operations in Singapore, and Marie-José Groenen, a niece of the deceased Jacques Roomans, also cited instances indicating alleged manipulation of the deceased by the third defendant.