There is an old Yoruba story that Chief Joseph Folahan Odunjo, the legendary author of the Alawiye series, used to teach children about the certainty of justice. In it, a man murders his enemy in cold blood. As the victim dies, he curses his killer: “Ìtànsán oòrùn yíó fi ó hàn!” – The ray of the sun will one day expose your evil. The murderer later becomes king and, by a cruel twist of fate, marries the victim’s young daughter, who witnessed the crime but was too traumatized to remember. Years later, a beam of sunlight hits the king’s eyes. He laughs, remembering the curse, and boastfully recounts the murder to his queen. She finally understands. She exposes him. He is dethroned and executed like a common criminal.
That ray of sunlight has now pierced the Aso Rock Villa. Nigeria is reeling from a scandal so brazen it defies belief. An alleged career fraudster, Adeniyi Adeyemi, managed to install himself as the Director General of two phantom presidential agencies – the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council and the Presidential Economic Advisory Council. He secured a ₦1.3 billion budget allocation for 2026. He held televised meetings with the EFCC, the National Assembly, and foreign diplomats. He operated accounts at the Central Bank of Nigeria. He was granted a recruitment waiver for 300 staff, signed off by a director in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service.
All of this, allegedly, with the blessing – or at least the blind eye – of President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila.
The question hanging over the nation is simple: How? How does an impostor penetrate the heart of the Nigerian state without a single alarm bell ringing? Did Gbajabiamila offer his back for the fraudster to ride? Did Adeyemi pay the Chief of Staff ₦400 million of a demanded ₦600 million bribe, as he has alleged, through a proxy who has since mysteriously died?
This is not a new story for Nigeria. It is a repeating nightmare. In 1975, General Yakubu Gowon’s government was consumed by the “Cement Armada” scandal, where officials ordered 20 million tonnes of cement instead of the needed five million, draining $1.4 billion from the treasury in a frenzy of contract racketeering. In the late 1990s, a syndicate led by Emmanuel Nwude, who masqueraded as the Governor of the Central Bank, sold a fictitious Abuja airport contract to a Brazilian banker for $242 million. Nuhu Ribadu, now the National Security Adviser, dismantled that ring. Today, the same institutional rot has returned, only this time it is operating inside the presidency itself.
The scandal has stripped away all pretense of statehood. The Nigerian establishment, as one observer put it, is now indistinguishable from a backroom betting shack. In traditional Yoruba culture, certain sacrileges were deemed impossible. A thief who steals the king’s sacred trumpet, the elders would say, has nowhere to blow it without being caught. Today, the thief has stolen the trumpet and is blowing it right in the palace, with the Chief of Staff dancing to the tune.
President Tinubu recently poked fun at public criticism of his wife, Remi, who had urged women to sell bean cakes to survive the economic hardship. He called her “Ìyá Alákàrà” during a public event. It was a nod, a sign that he is aware of the anger. But awareness is not action. The world is watching to see if he will do the needful, or if he will throw a presidential blanket over the rotting trash.
Optimists are few. The Nigerian public, hardened by decades of betrayal, expects this scandal to fizzle out. A calculated distraction will be funneled into the media – corn thrown to a distracted hen – and the public’s gaze will shift. The impostor will be scapegoated. His accessory in power will live happily ever after. The led can go to hell.
But there is a chance, however slim, that this is different. That the ray of sunlight has finally hit the king’s eyes. That Adeniyi Adeyemi, like the aide who betrayed IGP Tafa Balogun, is the tiny roadside stump that will trip a giant. The story of Odunjo’s king is a warning: power does not protect you from the truth. It only delays the reckoning.
Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.
