By Temi Salako
Femi Gbajabiamila’s ascent from Lagos lawmaker to Speaker of the House of Representatives and now Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu has been shadowed by recurring allegations that have repeatedly resurfaced. Although none has resulted in a criminal conviction in Nigeria, several controversies remain unresolved as of July 2026, including a case currently before the courts. The following is a chronology.
In January 2003, while practising law in the United States as “Femi Gbaja,” Gbajabiamila received $25,000 from a client’s personal injury settlement but failed to remit the funds. He later filed a petition admitting the misconduct, and in February 2007 the Supreme Court of Georgia suspended him from legal practice for 36 months. The episode returned to public attention in 2019 during his bid for Speaker of the 9th House. The Coalition of Public Interest Lawyers and Advocates and Philip Undie sought a court order to stop his candidacy, describing the matter as a US fraud conviction. His campaign rejected that characterisation, arguing it was a bar disciplinary case, not a criminal conviction, and presented a letter confirming his Georgia Bar membership. The legal challenge failed to prevent his election as Speaker in June 2019.
As Speaker, Gbajabiamila was named among National Assembly leaders reportedly paid $2 million each in cash to soften PIA provisions affecting oil-producing host communities. No formal charges followed, but the episode is cited whenever a new bribery claim touches him.
In October 2023, four months into his tenure as Chief of Staff, reports claimed Gbajabiamila was substituting his own names for the president’s choices in federal appointments, including a Resident Electoral Commissioner slot for Ekiti State, and that some Tinubu loyalists wanted him eased out. President Tinubu addressed it before a Federal Executive Council meeting, saying he had “absolute confidence” in his Chief of Staff’s integrity and asking the criticism to stop. That October 2023 video resurfaced online in July 2026 and was wrongly presented by some social media users as a fresh comment on the PFIPC affair described below; it was not.Two months later, reports claimed the 2024 budget set aside 10 billion naira to renovate his official residence. He denied it, and a Premium Times review found the sum was for the Presidential Quarters at Dodan Barracks and the Vice President’s Lagos lodge, not his personal accommodation. That specific claim did not hold up.
In July 2026, ADC presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar alleged that 2023 budget funds meant for the Federal College of Education in Umunze, Anambra State, were redirected to constituency projects in Gbajabiamila’s Surulere I seat in Lagos, framing it as part of a wider pattern of budget padding. Gbajabiamila’s office had not issued a detailed rebuttal of this specific claim as of this writing.
The one now consuming the Villa: In October 2025, Gbajabiamila’s office petitioned police and the DSS over Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, alleging he was forging appointment letters and Villa letterheads while presenting himself as Director General of a “Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council” (PFIPC). Adeyemi was detained from October 27 to November 19, 2025, then charged at the Federal High Court in Abuja with forgery, impersonation and obtaining by false pretenses. He has pleaded not guilty; his next hearing is July 27, 2026.
The complication is that PFIPC was not invisible to the state. It appeared on pages 50 and 51 of the signed 2026 Appropriation Act with over 1.3 billion naira allocated, roughly 803 million for personnel, 200 million for overhead and 300 million for capital spending, plus an office at the Federal Secretariat, bank accounts including a Treasury Single Account, and dozens of staff. On June 25, 2026, Adeyemi held a press conference alleging Gbajabiamila personally demanded 48 percent of PFIPC’s proposed 27.4 billion naira take-off grant, that he had already received 400 million naira through an intermediary, Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola, and that a further 200 million was demanded to complete his appointment. Tanimola, the alleged go-between, had died in a fire while in police custody the previous November, a death the opposition Nigeria Democratic Congress wants investigated alongside what Adeyemi describes as attempts on his own life. Adeyemi also called Gbajabiamila a murderer and an assassin.
The Presidency, through spokesman Bayo Onanuga, rejected the account, insisted PFIPC has no legal existence, and said Gbajabiamila’s office first flagged the fraud. On July 2, 2026, it formally cleared him of issuing any appointment letter, saying that power belongs solely to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. President Tinubu ordered the ICPC to investigate and report within 30 days, and the House opened a separate probe into how the allocation entered the budget.
Gbajabiamila’s lawyers, led by Kemi Pinheiro, SAN, wrote Adeyemi on July 6, 2026, denying any dealing with him, calling the claims “reckless, baseless and malicious,” and demanding 10 billion naira in damages plus a published apology, with proceeds going to charity if paid. Days later, in an interview with the online activist VeryDarkMan, Adeyemi partly walked back his certainty, saying he had dealt only through Tanimola, now dead, and could not personally confirm Gbajabiamila’s involvement.
The political reaction has split along familiar lines. The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, the NDC, the PDP, and SDP chairman Sadiq Gombe have called on Gbajabiamila to step aside pending investigation. FCT Minister Nyesom Wike has instead vouched for him, saying the man he knows “cannot be involved in any scam.” As of July 11, 2026, no charges have been filed against Gbajabiamila, the ICPC probe continues, and how a body the government now calls fictitious got a budget line, an office and a bank account remains formally unanswered.
The lawyer now fronting Gbajabiamila’s defense carries an unresolved chapter of his own. In September 2005, as receiver-manager appointed by Intercontinental Bank to take over Mobitel Nigeria, Pinheiro’s team arrived at the telecoms firm’s Victoria Island office with armed police. Mobitel’s founder, Charles Alaba Joseph, was found dead there within the hour. Lagos police initially called it suicide; the family disputed that after a preliminary autopsy reportedly found what looked like a bullet wound, and a pathologist who contradicted the suicide finding was later reported to have gone missing. The Inspector General of Police ordered a fresh investigation, and the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria called for a judicial inquiry into the roles of the bank, Pinheiro and the police. No public record indicates that inquiry produced findings or that charges followed against Pinheiro. The case has resurfaced in commentary now that he represents the Chief of Staff, though it predates the PFIPC affair by two decades and has no established link to it.
A smaller, separate rupture involves Lagos lawmaker and actor Desmond Elliot. During a Lagos State House of Assembly leadership contest, Gbajabiamila said Tinubu confronted him over intelligence reports tying Elliot to moves against the sitting Speaker, an episode he said nearly cost him his own job. Elliot denied involvement at the time, and the two later reconciled in public; Elliot apologized to Gbajabiamila on TVC in May 2026, calling the disagreement unintentional.
Two decades of episodes have followed a similar arc: a serious allegation surfaces, Gbajabiamila’s camp denies it, an official body is asked to investigate, and the matter fades without a Nigerian conviction. The current one is bigger than the others in naira terms and is the first to reach a live criminal courtroom, even if Adeyemi, not Gbajabiamila, is the defendant. The ICPC’s 30-day deadline and the July 27 court date are the two dates worth watching next.