One basic fact about the Bola Ahmed Tinubu governance is his brand of dogmatism and confidence in his failure as a ‘stubborn’ politician and a leader. He dribbles and disappoints those that believe him to be a straightforward person for trust. Tinubu has never believed to be on the wrong right track in governance despite his deficiences. He has never pretended to be loved by Nigerians because he internally knows his make as a complete mess. He knows the brand he is, and Nigerians believe what he is, and tolerate him as what he is, a washout.
A renowned activist and publisher of Sahara Reporters, an online publication, Omoloye Sowere once described Tinubu as a ‘criminal’ relying on what Reno Omokri, present Nigeria’s Ambassador to Mexico once described same Tinubu.
Since he ‘bought’ the presidency as he once publicly revealed, Nigeria has never been the same again. The country, on daily basis nose dives into different scandals originating from the government piloted by the incapacitated Tinubu.
Suffice it to 1983 when the military chased out the purported thieving politicians of the second republic and sentenced several of them to marathon jail terms for stealing. It was Gen. Sani Abacha, on the directive of the coupists, made the announcement on Radio Nigeria that sacked the second republic. He spoke of an economy hopelessly managed, of debtor and beggar nation, of hospital turned to mere consulting clinics without essential drugs and schools in decay, and of leaders who revel in squandermania, corruption and indiscipline.
The mantle of leadership failed on the shoulders of a ruthless Gen. Nuhammadu Buhari who enjoyed high respect within the military institution as an incorruptible person, then charged with the responsibility of cleansing the rot which he did with passion.
Since then, there has not been any other sincere cleansing of corrupt practices in Nigeria even by Buhari as civilian president. The 1983 cleansing exercise has since outlived every government. In 2026 that cleansing reads like breaking news.
Nigerians vividly know that their leaders are controlled by cabals at all levels. But under the man who ‘purchased’ the presidency, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the country has graduated to a more organized, more brazen and more deficient. A cabal whispers behind the scene. A cartel runs the market. What Nigerians are now forced to watch and tolerate that is unfolding in the affairs that the public christened GbajaGate. We are yet to finish with DasukiGate, DiezaniGate, MeleKyariGate, BettaEduGate, SadiyyaUmarFaroukGate, HalimaShehuGate, Ahmed IdrisGate, EmefieleGate, MainaGate and several other Gates. GbajaGate suggests that the presidency has ceased to be the seat of government but transformed to the headquarters of a franchise.
Let’s strip the noise and begin with what is documented, admitted and beyond doubt or dispute. The 2026 Appropriation Act, passed by the National Assembly and assented to by the President, contains an allocation of over N1.3billion to a ‘government’ agency called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), also referred to in the budget as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC).
Let’s hold the two facts side by side and let them stare at each other. A Federal Government Council cannot be fictitious and funded. It cannot be a phantom and a line item. Either the 2026 budget contains an appropriation to a ghost, or the government is lying about a ghost. Imagine the sum of N1,302,978,784 in the 2026 budget for a Council the Presidency swears does not exist. It was the same Presidency that prepared and presented the budget to the National Assembly.
The situation gets worse. The man at the centre of the storm, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, who presented himself for close to three years at Director-General of the Council, did not operate from a shadow. Several reports indicate that the agency occupied an office space at the Federal Secretariat with the approval of the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. It maintained accounts registered with the Central Bank of Nigeria. It engaged openly with ministries, departments and agencies, corresponded with public institutions and even interfaced with foreign diplomats, by accounts the presidency itself has not disputed.
The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, hurriedly issued a disclaimer on June 11, 2026 denying the existence of the Council. The Presidency says it had petitioned security agencies in October 2025 over what it calls an elaborate forgery and impersonation scheme, and that Prince Adeyemi and two others now face a charge of eight counts of forgery and impersonation before An Abuja Federal High Court, with investigators pointing to 34 Bank Accounts linked to him.
Let’s painstakingly agree that there was such a petition as claimed from the presidency to security agencies submitted since October 2025. Since the submission, the presidency meant up to June 2026, there was no action taken until the whistle was blown in June 2026? That is a story for the dead not for the living.
There was this man, Babatunde Tanimola, believed to be the intermediary between Gbaja and Adeyemi who died in a mysterious fire incident in a hotel at Utako, Abuja on October 22, 2025. And it was on same date Gbaja claimed to have submitted a petition to police on the Adeyemi impersonation.
Adeyemi himself had separately alleged multiple attempts on his life, including an attack along Abuja-Kaduna Expressway in September 2025. He pointed accusing fingers at government forces for the attacks to silence him from exposing the scadal.
So the official story is this. One man, acting alone, forged a presidential appointment, walked confidently into the Federal Secretariat, obtained an office space, recruited staff and opened accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria, officially transacted with the highest organs of government for almost three years, invited and engaged foreign diplomats and investors in the name of Nigeria, and had his ‘phantom’ agency captured in the national budget presented by the President to the National Assembly, and signed into law by the President. But Nigerians are today told that the agency is fictitious. Why the insult on our collective intelligence? Are we all the Akpabios or the Wikes to believe such foolery?
Against that official story stand the counter allegations of Adeyemi himself. It must be stated plainly that those allegations, that they are unproven with facts, and that the Chief of Staff, through the presidency, denied them entirely.
Adeyemi alleges that his appointment was facilitated in exchange for financial inducement. Reports of his claims put the figures variously at N600million solicited and received, or N400million received through proxies with a demand for a further N200million alongside demands connected to a proposed take-off grant of N27.4billion. He insists that his appointment was genuine, that Femi Gbajabiamila was fully aware of it, and that the Courts will vindicate him. Speaking further on the saga, Adeyemi put his defiance in one simple sentence: Nigeria is not a banana republic.
The presidency’s response was not only to brand him an impostor and fraudster, but to deceive Nigerians to believing falsehood as defence that the Chief of Staff does not write letters or give appointments. Facially, we can agree for the sake of argument. But does the Chief of Staff facilitate appointments into the government? We can all recall several allegations of trading federal appointments levied against the Chief of Staff that necessitated his petition to the office of the Inspector-General of Police to save face. Since then, we have not heard any outcome including arrest and invitation by the police. It was all a deceit!
What the presidency’s response on the Adeyemi saga conspicuously did not do, as comments from investigative platform FIJ observed, was to explain the budget allocation, or explain how a supposed impostor acquired the full institutional wardrobe of the Nigerian state.
Presidency’s rebuttal addressed everything except the questions sensible Nigerians are asking. That why is Gbajabiamila not suspend to pave way for discreet investigation? Why was he cleared by Tinubu before investigation? Why should a federal government controlled agency (ICPC) be tasked to investigate the scandal not an independent body? There is no fire without a smoke!The presidency for its cluelessness, built a trap for itself unconsciously without an escape route. If the presidency is really telling the truth, then an individual penetrated the Presidency, the Federal Secretariat, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Budget Office and the National Assembly, and operated a parallel agency of government for three uninterrupted years under the watch of the Chief of Staff without being dictated. That is not a global embarrassment but a collapse of the Nigerian state as a functioning institution, and it happened right inside the president’s office. That is more than a disgrace but corruption fully instituted at the highest level of government!
If on the other hand, the allegations are true, then the office of the Chief of Staff has been operating as a tollgate where access to the Nigerian state is sold, and the special purpose vehicle is not aberration but a business model.
Either fork convicts the Tinubu administration, or one convicts it of terminal incompetence. The other convicts it of something darker. Nigerians have framed this fork with surgical precision, observing that a government defending its embattled Chief of Staff rather than explaining how the scheme thrived is telling Nigerians it is either complicit or completely incompetent. Nigerians are entitled to ask which it is, and they are entitled to an answer under oath, not mere haphazard press statement to bury truth.
What Nigerians are today watching and accommodating is the destruction of the country’s institutions and a huge intelligence failure on a global scale. Now let’s place the scandal where it actually lives, in the country that must pay for it.
According to the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update of April 2026, the number of Nigerians living below the poverty line rose from 56% in 2023, the very year Tinubu took the mantle of leadership, to 61% in 2024, and then to 63% in 2025. That’s about 140million human beings. The Bank’s own words are that household incomes have not grown fast enough, and poverty is yet to begin declining.
140million Nigerians thrown into abject poverty within the period and many more are expected to join the line if Tinubu bounces back to power in 2027. The staggering number is more than the number of people in any nation in Europe. This under a government that removed fuel subsidy at its inauguration, floated the local currency (naira) into a canyon, and asked ordinary Nigerians, again and again, to endure sacrifice today for Renewed Hope tomorrow while the tomorrow has been destroyed already. A nagging question to Tinubu is who builds tomorrow without building today? Only Tinubu and his hangers-on have that magic while 140million Nigerian are surviving below the poverty line, N1.3billion was allocated to a ‘ghost’ agency. It’s really Emi-lokan affair.
Now, set the two ledgers side by side. In one Nigeria, a mother in Surulere soaks garri for breakfast because the price of yam etc have outrun her income, a father in Wase pulls out his child from school because the fees is competing with foodstuff, a graduate in Gagdi hawks in traffic because the economy that grows on television screen does not grow in his village. In the other Nigeria, a phantom Council that ‘officially’ does not exist strolls into the national budget and collects a line item of N1.3billion, occupies an office in the Federal Secretariat, has accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The solicited sacrifices trumpeted were never shared. They were assigned. The people fast so that the phantom may feast. Every naira routed to a ghost is a naira taken from a clinic without drugs, a school without roofs, a family denied food. Corruption in a rich country is a scandal. Corruption on this scale, in a country where 63% of the people are poor, is not a scandal. It is a form of violence and disaster.
GbajaGate is only the visible flash. Beneath it sits the finding of this author for months. The International Monetary Fund’s identification of N8.8trillion squandered outside official budget records is disturbing. If N1.3billion can be budgeted for a phantom agency, what was the N8.8trillion used for? Was it stolen and stashed for 2027 Muslim-Muslim reelection or for Renewed Hopelessness? Nigerians are not the fools rated to be. Thief-nubu MUST GIVE WAY IN 2027. Nigerians and Nigeria are bleeding profusely under the watch of a grave digger as President!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues.
