Given the Nigerian state’s history of protecting powerful wrongdoers, many citizens are deeply pessimistic that the truth of the Gbajabiamila-Adeyemi scandal will ever see the light of day. There are whispers that Gbajabiamila did not act without the president’s knowledge. They are sure the scandal will soon peter out like previous others before it
By Festus Adedayo
The late Chief Joseph Folahan (JF) Odunjo left behind an allegory that perfectly mirrors today’s most notorious national scandal. It explains the infamy surrounding President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila and allegedly self-appointed DG of Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) and the Presidential Economic Advisory Council, (PEAC) Adeniyi Adeyemi. Celebrated for his indigenous production of knowledge, Odunjo’s most imperishable legacy remains his role as a writer and educator. His iconic Yoruba children’s literature, the Alawiye (Careful Explainer) series, served as foundational texts for primary school pupils from the 1960s through the 1980s. These books instilled impeccable morals in generations of students, with their core lessons having endured for decades.
In one famous Alawiye story, Odunjo illustrates the absolute certainty of retribution. A man in a village, locked in a bitter feud with an adversary, murders him in cold blood inside his own home. As the victim lies dying, his final testament is a curse: “Ìtànsán oòrùn yíó fi ó hàn!” (The ray of the sun will one day expose your evil!).
Unbeknownst to the murderer, the victim’s little daughter was hiding nearby. Too young to process the horrific crime or identity of the culprit, she grew up with only the trauma of the event. Years later, the murderer rose to become a powerful king and, by a strange calculus of fate, married this very girl. One day, as he sat surrounded by his monarchical splendor, a blinding ray of sunlight pierced through the palace window and intrudingly slithered into his eyes.
The king’s mind raced back to the crime of his youth. The dying man’s warning re-echoed in his memory. Believing the threat was now too feeble to ever manifest, the king burst into a loud, mocking laugh. Hearing this strange guffaw, the queen asked what amused him. Still laughing, he proudly recounted the murder story and ended the narration with a mimicry of her father’s final words: “Ìtànsán oòrùn yíó fi ó hàn, indeed!,” believing it would never come to pass.
Instantly recognizing the details of her father’s assassination, the queen resolved to fructify the dying man’s prophecy. She exposed the king’s bloody secret to the entire kingdom, leading to his dethronement and his execution like an ordinary criminal.
Recent Nigerian history offers another unkind reminder of retribution. It manifested in the downfall of the 11th indigenous Inspector General of Police (IGP), Tafa Balogun. His grisly fall from grace affirms the classic Yoruba proverb, “Igi kékeré tí a bá f’ojú ré níí gbé’ni subú” (It is the inconsequential roadside stump that trips a giant.)
If these allegations hold true for an administration already fighting a reputation for systemic corruption, the Ìtànsán oòrùn — the inescapable ray of the sun — has finally pierced the darkness and has shown the mess that is the Villa. And the gangling Adeniyi Adeyemi, like Tafa Balogun’s aide, may very well be the tiny roadside stump that could send Gbajabiamila into a fatal fall
Ibadan culture curates a similar aphorism around its ancient, notoriously murky River Kudeti: anyone who characterizes the Kudeti as a mere passing flood (àgbàrá) is destined to be swept away by its hidden wrath. Flexing his absolute power in 2005, Balogun ordered the detention of an aide whom he accused of misappropriating ₦5 million, unwittingly poking a sleeping Kudeti River in his own backyard. That seemingly inconsequential aide was privy to the IGP’s humongous illicit acquisitions. Upon his release, the aide became the canary that sang the sleazy details that ultimately unseated the hippopotamus-sized police chief.
Today, a biting pall of national fury, shock, and disbelief envelopes Nigeria. A populace repeatedly scammed by its leaders since independence is shocked to its very marrow. Political psychologists often argue that Nigerians are emotionally inured to trauma, so numbed by repeated corruption that they are no longer capable of being shocked. Yet, the current presidential scandal defies even that numbness. An “impostor” within the Nigerian presidency managed to get a “sham” agency allocated ₦1.3 billion in the 2026 national budget. Outrageous and benumbing.
This individual also held televised meetings with the top echelons of state power —including the EFCC, the National Assembly, and foreign diplomats — and operated accounts domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). In an official letter granting a recruitment waiver for 300 staff to the controversial agency, an authorization letter signed on August 7, 2025, in the capacity of Director of Organization Design and Development, in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, was signed by a Mimi Abu. Adeyemi also maintained offices within the Federal Secretariat, a hold that is literally akin to taking an elephant through the eye of a needle.
Over the last two decades, Nigeria has birthed scandals of tectonic proportions. A few hours ago, the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, said the Tinubu government’s about 2% of GDP worth of public spending was not recorded in recent official budgets. This leaves a yawning gap between government’s reported deficit and actual financial needs. This opacity hallmarks the Tinubu government. The Gbajabiamila/Adeyemi inferno appears to be another of the Tinubu administration’s own sewage-encrusted medallion, begging the question: Is this an ignorant systemic error, or a monumental fraud gone awry?
To understand the scope of this rot as a national malaise, let us sidestep the Tinubu government’s into previous benumbing scandals that have become the paterfamilias of the 27 years of Nigeria’s democratic journey. They are huge scandals of Hiroshima and Nagazaki proportions. Administration after administrations, it thus looks to me that every administration has its own bags of scandals and the Gbajabiamila crucifix is the Tinubu government’s maggots-infested pouch of sleaze. The administration’s own is however different because, ab-initio, judging by the pedigree of the Lagos Boys brought to Abuja, it would be the world’s seventh wonder if they don’t end up selling Aso Rock for individual benefit by the end of their tenure.
This current Gbajabiamila/Adeyemi scandal reminds older Nigerians of a remarkably similar structural nightmare in 1975: the infamous corruption scandal known as the “Cement Armada.” Just as President Tinubu is under a global microscope today because of his Chief of Staff’s alleged unholy matrimony with a serial con artist, General Yakubu Gowon faced a similar reckoning that year. Swimming in postwar oil boom, the military Head of State announced a massive $100 billion development programme to revitalize national infrastructure damaged during the civil war.
The Ministry of Defence prioritized building of new army barracks, requesting 2.9 million tonnes of cement annually out of a total national requirement of 5 million tonnes. What followed was an unprecedented bazaar of contract racketeering. Instead of the requested 5 million tonnes, greedy officials ordered 20 million tonnes, draining roughly $1.4 billion from the state treasury. This chaos birthed phony companies operating ghost ships with forged documents, all queuing up to claim shady payouts. They were aided by big-epaulette military Generals. When the Murtala Muhammed government toppled Gowon later that year, it established the Cement Contracts Negotiating Committee (CCNC). However, even committee members were soon engulfed in fraud allegations, reportedly accepting bribes from suppliers in exchange for clearance.
The current Gbajabiamila/Adeyemi scandal presents a con-within-a-con model: a habitual swindler successfully conning an old political warhorse conman — the Nigerian state. The result is a mind-boggling display of serial crookery at the absolute apex of power. Femi Gbajabiamila is alleged to be deeply entangled with AdeniyiAdeyemi, a man described as a career fraudster. Not only did a swindling of the Nigerian state happen in the present case, the wind that blew feathers off the rump of our national hen took away all our pretence to statehood, revealing an anyhow-ness that daily takes place in the top hierarchy of national statecraft. This breach has stripped away our national pretenses, exposing a level of dysfunction in the high corridors of power. In all of these, the Nigerian establishment is indistinguishable from its appearance as a clone of a backroom pools-betting shack.
Nigeria witnessed a similarly audacious heist about three decades ago. Between 1995 and 1998, a syndicate of Nigerian fraudsters pulled off one of the largest advance-fee scams in global history. They sold a fictitious contract for a non-existent Abuja airport to Nelson Sakaguchi, the head of a Brazilian bank’s Cayman Islands branch. The principal actor was Emmanuel Odinigwe Nwude, who later became a member of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, posturing as the Governor of the CBN. He was aided by Christian Ikechukwu Anajemba (acting as Deputy Governor), Anajemba’s wife Amaka, and Nzeribe Edeh Okoli. Sakaguchi met his waterloo when the Spanish bank Santander attempted to acquire Banco Noroeste. A forensic audit exposed a massive financial crater.
Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer head of the EFCC and current National Security Adviser, successfully dismantled that international fraud ring. Back then, Nigerians wondered how Nwude could hoodwink a foreign banker out of $242 million without the state’s knowledge, and how such vast sums moved through the Nigerian financial system without being flagged. The international disgrace was indelible.
Today, those exact questions hang over the nation. How did an alleged conman penetrate the critical corpus of the Nigerian establishment so effortlessly? Did Gbajabiamila offer his back for the fraudster to ride upon? Did Adeyemi truly pay the Chief of Staff ₦400 million out of a demanded ₦600 million bribe through a proxy who has since mysteriously died?
This total institutional collapse that could allow the Gbajabiamila/Adeyemi scandal recalls traditional Africa, where certain sacrileges were deemed impossible. To protect the collective, society cordoned off sacred spaces using the wire mesh of taboo. Yoruba designated the mysterious forest where elders worshiped deities and made offerings as the Igbó Àìwò — the forbidden mythical, mysterious forest. The society also created warnings. Sacred sayings were even curated to back them up. To steal a king’s sacred trumpet, for instance, was a shame to the collective town. To protect communal honor, a rhetorical question sprang up in the community’s fortification process: “Olè tó gbé kàkàkí ọba, níbo ni yóò ti fọn ón?” (A thief who steals the king’s sacred trumpet, where exactly does he intend to blow it without being caught?)
Today, daring thieves steal the king’s sacred trumpet, blow it even in the king’s palace without being caught. If the impostor thesis is confirmed, it thus goes without saying that Adeniyi did exactly like the thief in that trumpet allegory. He stole the Nigerian presidential trumpet and allegedly got even the president’s Chief of Staff to dance to his cash-oozing tune. The sacred borders of Igbó Àìwò would then have entirely collapsed.
When the scandal broke that Adeyemi had installed himself as the Director General of the PFIPC, citizens immediately remembered Emmanuel Nwude, the fictitious Nigerian airport and the $242 million Banco Noroeste heist. The Chief of Staff’s October 2025 declaration that the PFIPC was an entirely fake entity, combined with Adeyemi’s counter-allegation of a ₦600 million bribe and subsequent police charges, raise more maddening questions than answers. The fact that the alleged impostor enjoyed an array of official paraphernalia makes the federal government’s claims difficult to swallow. If these institutional compromises are confirmed, the integrity of Nigeria’s public sector has collapsed and wonders will seem to have ended.
But, recently, President Bola Tinubu poked fun at the public during an event at the Aso Rock Villa. Acknowledging the First Lady, Remi Tinubu’s presence, he humorously referred to her as the “Ìyá Alákàrà” (the Àkàrà bean cake seller). This bit of humor was a clear acknowledgement of the president’s awareness of the heavy public criticism directed at Remi. She had earlier condescendingly urged Nigerian women to take up Àkàrà selling to survive the economic climate. The president was apparently deploying humour as an affirmation of awareness of a horde of Nigerian public commentators’ vilification of his wife. This fun-poking is a deliberate feedback, an indication to the Nigerian commentariat that the president is not totally insulated from the biting stings of public commentaries. If this is the case, it thus goes without saying that Tinubu must be following the cadence of the biting public angst at his government on the latest presidential scandal inside which his Chief of Staff is marooned.The world is watching whether he will do the needful or offer a presidential wing to cover the rotting trash scandal.
Given the Nigerian state’s history of protecting powerful wrongdoers, many citizens are deeply pessimistic that the truth of the Gbajabiamila-Adeyemi scandal will ever see the light of day. There are whispers that Gbajabiamila did not act without the president’s knowledge. They are sure the scandal will soon peter out like previous others before it. Many even claim that an unholy dalliance that is as strong and impenetrable as the edan is to the Ogboni fraternity exists between Gbaja and his boss. In Yoruba mythology, the edan — a conjoined brass or bronze staff depicting a male and female figure linked by a chain — symbolizes the absolute judicial authority of the earth deity, binding the secret cult’s members in unbreakable solidarity.
Optimists of accountability worry that the Nigerian public’s attention span is too short to survive the political distractions that Aso Rock will soon deploy to swathe this humongous scandal. Soon, a calculated, less destructive scandal will likely be funneled into the media highway — like throwing corn to a distracted hen — to divert the public’s gaze.
Yet, for Gbajabiamila and the presidency, this scandal may well be their ultimate comeuppance. The prevailing public belief is that the current administration is merely an extension of the same political machinery that has comfortably exploited the nation’s wealth for decades. Rumours persist that the hidden financial sleazes perpetrated over the last 38 months far outweigh this specific impostor scam.
For Gbajabiamila and even the Nigerian presidency, whether they successfully extinguish this raging fire or it extinguishes them, many believe this scandal is their comeuppance. The belief out there is that the current Nigerian government, especially the Aso Rock Villa, is a clone of the same gang of political vermin of Lagos who for 27 years have asphyxiated the State of Aquatic Splendour by ceaselessly sucking its financial blood.
Nigerians have literally staked a bet that nothing will come out of this scandal. In saner climes where the leadership isn’t a rotten cabbage, by now, the Chief of Staff must have become history. But here, the led can go to hell. What will happen is, while the “impostor” will be a scapegoat, his accessory in power will live happily ever thereafter. Judging by their rulers’ pedigree of the swine, Nigerians should by now know that our current rulers have a heart as hard as the carapace of a tortoise. Nothing fazes nor rouses them from a sworn path of evil.
Added to this is the allegation that Femi Gbajabiamila is a man who, in literal Yoruba rendering, has, since the beginning of this administration, had a legion of mouths hovering over him like flies perch on rotten mutton (èèyàn t’énu ńkùn). Even before this scandal, in whooshed voices within the political space, unconfirmed allegations are rife that the Villa is a marketplace for appointment racketeering. If these allegations hold true for an administration already fighting a reputation for systemic corruption, the Ìtànsán oòrùn — the inescapable ray of the sun — has finally pierced the darkness and has shown the mess that is the Villa. And the gangling Adeniyi Adeyemi, like Tafa Balogun’s aide, may very well be the tiny roadside stump that could send Gbajabiamila into a fatal fall.
•Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly of the writer/author and do not represent the views of The Daily Crucible.
