Very few people know Jennifer ‘Jamila’ Atiku Abubakar until the bubble bust on their marriage, as the Igbo woman is seeking for divorce.
Jennifer is believed to be instrumental to the achievements of the former Nigeria’s Vice President, Atiku Abubakar.
Today, February 1, Jennifer made a full announcement on their separation and her reasons.
She said that there was a breakdown in their marriage and that her continued stay in the United Kingdom with their kids and different issues caused the current storm in the marriage.
Jennifer was born in Onitsha, Anambra State as Jennifer Iwenjiora.
She bagged her first degree in Political Science and Communications, a Masters in International Politics with a concentration in International Law and Communications, and a doctorate degree in International Relations from the American University in Washington D.C.
She was a news correspondent with the NTA in the 1980s.
Jennifer first met Atiku Abubakar in 1982. She relocated to the United States in the late 1980s where she became a US citizen.
She got married to a man named Douglas to whom she bore her first son, Anthony Chuka Douglas but the couple soon divorced.
She became re-acquainted with Atiku Abubakar in the 1990s and they got married.
Jennifer embraced Islam and changed her name to ‘Jamilah’.
She was the subject of a financial indictment by the US govt where she was believed to have helped Atiku bring over $40 million in suspect funds into the United States through wire transfers sent by offshore corporations to U.S. banks accounts between 2000 and 2008. She however denied the claims.
It is alleged that Jennifer also helped her husband establish the American University of Nigeria (AUN) with the transferred funds.
She is named after one of the administrative buildings in the American University of Nigeria (AUN).
Jennifer is a legal practitioner and is the Managing Partner at Miyetti Law, an Abuja-based private Law firm. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Miyetti Quarterly Law Review.
She took up a job as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sherjah, UAE in 2008.
As a philanthropist, she is the founder of an Abuja-based NGO called GEDE foundation.
She has three children. Her first son, Anthony got married in Dubai in 2018.
