N10bn Or The Courts: Gbajabiamila Gives Adeyemi 72 Hours Over Bribery Claims
The bitter feud between the Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, Femi Gbajabiamila, and the self-styled director-general of a disputed government council took a fresh legal turn this week, with the presidential aide threatening to drag his accuser to court over allegations that range from bribery to murder.
Through his lawyers, Pinheiro LP, Gbajabiamila served Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi a letter dated July 6, 2026 and signed by Kemi Pinheiro, SAN, demanding a retraction and threatening a defamation suit of N10bn. The letter, according to The PUNCH, gives Adeyemi a 72-hour window from receipt to comply or face the courts.
At the heart of the quarrel is the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, an entity the Presidency insists never existed. Adeyemi, who has repeatedly presented himself as its director-general, used a June 25 press conference to level a string of accusations against the Chief of Staff. He claimed Gbajabiamila demanded 48 per cent of the council’s purported N27.4bn take-off grant, a sum put at roughly N12.5bn, and alleged that the aide received N400m through proxies tied to appointments linked to the body. Beyond the money claims, Adeyemi went as far as branding Gbajabiamila “a murderer” and “an assassin” during the briefing.
Gbajabiamila’s lawyers listed nine allegations from that press conference, describing them as “not only false but gravely defamatory.” They argued the claims were “designed to portray our client as corrupt, dishonest, criminally culpable, morally bankrupt, administratively incompetent, a murderer and unfit to occupy public office.”
The other allegations, as spelt out in the letter, accuse Gbajabiamila of abusing his office to intimidate individuals and media organisations, knowingly taking part in fraudulent budget processes, seeking to misuse security agencies, and possibly performing his duties while under the influence of intoxicating substances.
The Chief of Staff maintains he has never so much as met Adeyemi. “You have never at any time met, interacted with, communicated with, or had any form of personal or official dealing whatsoever with him,” the lawyers wrote, arguing that fabricating claims against a person with whom Adeyemi had “absolutely no relationship or interaction” underscored “the reckless, baseless and malicious nature” of the publication.
The letter also leaned heavily on the fact that Adeyemi is already before the courts. He has been listed at the Federal High Court, Abuja, in Charge No: FHC/ABJ/CR/652/2026, FRN v. Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew & Ors, on allegations of forgery. Prosecutors accuse him of forging an appointment letter bearing Gbajabiamila’s purported signature and counterfeiting presidential letter-headed papers to pass himself off as a government official. Against that backdrop, the lawyers found it “even more disturbing” that Adeyemi resorted to defaming their client “after a criminal Charge had been filed against you,” insisting that “trial by media remains unknown to Nigerian law and cannot be a substitute for due process.”
Should Adeyemi fail to comply, the letter warns of both criminal defamation proceedings under FCT law and a civil claim for N10bn in aggravated and exemplary damages, to be paid to a charity of Gbajabiamila’s choosing, alongside a perpetual injunction and a court order compelling the apology. The lawyers want Adeyemi to stop making further defamatory statements, pull down all transcripts, videos and recordings from every platform, publish a full retraction and apology in at least five national newspapers and across the social media channels used to spread the press conference, and give a written undertaking not to publish anything further about the Chief of Staff.
What keeps the matter from being a straightforward denial is the paper trail. The disputed council, listed in the 2026 Appropriation Act as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, received over N1.3bn in budget allocations, made up of roughly N803m for personnel costs, N200m for overhead and N300m for capital expenditure. Adeyemi has seized on this, arguing at the June 25 briefing that an agency appearing on pages 50 and 51 of a presidential-assented appropriation bill could not truly be non-existent. The Presidency has held firm that the agency is fraudulent and does not exist.
The dispute has drawn in prominent voices. Human rights lawyer Femi Falana, speaking in Adeyemi’s defence, said the Presidency lacked the constitutional authority to exonerate anyone in the matter and pushed for an independent probe of both Gbajabiamila and Adeyemi. The controversy has also stirred political reactions, with opposition figures calling for scrutiny of the Chief of Staff even as the Presidency continues to describe Adeyemi as a serial impostor whose allegations amount to an afterthought.
For now, the courtroom looms larger than the press conference. Adeyemi is due back at the Federal High Court on July 27, 2026, where the forgery charges against him will be tested. Whether Gbajabiamila’s N10bn threat crystallises into an actual suit may well depend on how Adeyemi responds within the three-day window he has been given.