Exclusive: How Senator Joel Onowakpor Purchased $2.6m US Mansion While Serving As FIRS South South Coordinator

Secrets Reporters

A six-bedroom, eight-bathroom single-family residence at 11507 Bistro Lane in the Royal Oaks Country Club subdivision of Houston, Texas, stands as a high-value residential holding linked to a serving Nigerian public officer. Property records identify the owners as Thomas Ewomazino Joel Onowakpo and Gloria Eloho Joel Onowakpo. 

The 7,525-square-foot home, built in 2007 on a 0.37-acre lot, carries a market value estimate of 2,604,902 dollars and an assessed value for the 2025 tax year of 2,186,353 dollars, generating an annual tax bill of 27,021 dollars. Ownership transferred to the couple under a vendors lien recorded on 14 September 2021, with a contemporaneous conventional mortgage of 1,477,000 dollars issued by Change Lending LLC. The property is listed as owner-occupied, and public records show no pre-foreclosure activity.

Thomas Ewomazino Joel Onowakpo, also known as Joel-Onowakpo Thomas or Joel-Onowakpo Ewomazino Thomas, is the senator representing Delta South Senatorial District in the 10th National Assembly. 

He assumed office on 13 June 2023 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, succeeding James Manager. Born on 27 April 1967 in Emede, Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta State, He served as Executive Chairman of the Delta State Board of Internal Revenue from 24 July 2009 to 22 September 2015. He earlier held the position of caretaker chairman of Isoko South Local Government Council.

Under the Fifth Schedule, Part I of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), every public officer is required to submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau a written declaration of all properties, assets and liabilities, including those of unmarried children under the age of eighteen. The declaration must be made immediately after taking office, at the end of every four years, and at the end of the term of office. Paragraph 11(3) of the same schedule provides that any property or assets acquired after a required declaration that cannot be fairly attributed to income, gift or loan approved under the Code shall be deemed to have been acquired in breach of the Code unless the contrary is proved. 

The Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act reinforces these obligations and empowers the Bureau to receive, examine and retain custody of the declarations. Senators fall within the definition of public officers covered by these provisions.

The Houston property was acquired in September 2021, after Joel-Onowakpo Thomas had left the Delta State Board of Internal Revenue and before he assumed his current senatorial seat. Public records available at the time of reporting do not disclose whether the residence, the associated mortgage or other related assets appear in any asset declaration filed with the Code of Conduct Bureau upon his assumption of office in 2023 or in subsequent periodic filings. The market value of the property substantially exceeds the scale of official remuneration attached to the senatorial office under the figures published by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission. Texas property records list the couple as joint owners and confirm continuous owner-occupied status since the 2021 transfer.

The combination of documented ownership of a multi-million-dollar foreign residential asset by a serving senator, the constitutional requirement for comprehensive asset declaration, and the disparity between official legislative remuneration and the scale of the holding forms the factual basis of the public record surrounding the property at 11507 Bistro Lane.