If someone introducing himself as “Prince” ever wishes you a good morning, don’t trust him — check the actual time, because it’s probably pitch black outside. In fact, smart Nigerians have a common saying; if you know 10 people named “Prince”, 15 of them are fraudsters.
So it didn’t really come as a surprise when Ambassador Prince Adeyemi Adeniyi, the director general of a government investment agency, was outed as a scam by the presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga. But this expose didn’t come from the good heart of Mr. Bayo. In fact, the presidency had been willing to keep this entire episode under lock and key if not for an interesting happening a few weeks before. You see, Prince Adeyemi, who had been arrested and was out on bail, did not believe he was a scammer.
In a shocking twist, the man who was already on the hook for eight counts of fraud, called a press conference and told Nigerians the God-honest truth. He had been asked to pay 600 million Nigerian naira to the President’s chief of staff, a fellow named Femi Gbajabiamila, to facilitate his assumption of the office of Director General of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC).
He said that he paid 400 million, and was to balance the man 200 million. To top this fantastic exposition up, Prince Ambassador Adeyemi Adeniyi said that his life is now in danger because he refused to remit 48% of the agency’s “take-off” funding to Mr Femi Gbajabiamila. Here are the words from the prince himself;
If this story is true, Prince Adeyemi argues, how could he be a fraud? How can the government say the agency is unknown to them?
The story here, if you can believe it, is that Prince Adeyemi believes his agency is actually real, and the presidency, through chief of staff Gbajabiamila (a name that sounds, like Prince, quite scammy already) is trying to punish him for not playing ball by agreeing to their sharing formula. This press conference was what revealed the entire story to the Nigerian press, and what necessitated the “debunking” press release by Bayo Onanuga.
It is on this bedrock of strangeness that our story begins.
Who is the man, Ambassador Prince Adeyemi?
The first we learn of him is on Nairaland, where he is exposed for a performing a simple scam. He says he has just returned from New Delhi where he was elected “President-general” of the World Youth Organization. Unlike small-time scammers who never provide details, Ambassador Adeyemi tells us the number of votes he got at this election. His total vote tally was 1,679, while the runner up, from the U.S no less, only got 501 votes. He was even set to resume his new position at Geneva, Switzerland per a statement from his own spokesperson, one Adeola Badru.
He also got several newspapers to announce his appointments to give him even more legitimacy. Punch and the Nigerian News Agency published the news of his success in New Delhi, giving him a veneer of legitimacy that he could use to open many hitherto closed doors. How he got those establishments to do that, and how they verified his incredible story, is truly anyone’s guess (my guess is a lot of money in a brown envelope).
When people wondered who he was that he got this coveted position so dramatically, he had an elaborate self-mythology to share. He announced that he was a former aide to Ban Ki-Moon, and that one of his first acts as president-general of this organization (which he claimed was the youth arm of the United Nations), was to seek security council approval to appoint almost a thousand nominees to work with him globally. You see, our dear ambassador wasn’t merely a president general for himself, he was one for the people. And after his appointment, he went on a tour of the country trying to recruit these “nominees” to work with him.
Unfortunately for our star-boy, his scam was too successful and it drew the attention of the actual United Nations. The rebuke was prompt and somewhat impersonal. They didn’t even mention him by name — the organization merely said that there was no organization called the World Youth Organization that it was affiliated with, and it had no clue who Adeyemi was. This must have come as a rude shock to Adeyemi, who was already promising jobs to thousands of youth in obscure villages around the country. The people who wanted these jobs, of course, merely had to pay a one-time registration fee…
Does that sound familiar?
This scam may have been ultimately unsuccessful (we cannot truly know unless we check the books — who knows how many contractors and hopeful job-getters Adeyemi scammed before the gig was up?), but it wasn’t our man’s first gig. We now know that Adeyemi attended LAUTECH, and contested for the post of SUG president twice. He failed twice, but that didn’t deter him as he went about town claiming to actually be the Student Union president. He left the university without graduating. But not to worry — on his Facebook page, he now claims to have actually attended the Western University in Ontario instead. There is no record of that ever happening.
Now in his thirties, Adeyemi has clearly had quite the career, most of it filled with fraudulent schemes like this. His newest scheme is undoubtedly his bravest and most successful yet. On March 8 2024, Adeyemi came into possession of a letter appointing him as the director general of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council. A few months of paper pushing later, Adeyemi writes the office of the secretary of the federal government asking for office space. He, somehow, despite the notorious backlog of agencies searching for spaces in the federal secretariat, gets this space.
But that is just one of the miracles Prince Adeyemi performs. He wrote to the office of the accountant general to grant “self-accounting” status, and even gets three senior accountants assigned to his office. The accountants, according to their own testimony, had nothing to do, and they resigned to coming to the office once or twice a week just to “show their face”.
Another miracle by this prolific (any serious writer would be running out of adjectives to describe this fellow) scammer is an “invitation” to join Nigeria’s official delegation to the Canada-Africa Fintech Summit, Aug 3–8, 2025 — under the banner of Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda. A greater miracle is even underway, as weeks later, the office of the accountant general of the federation writes to the Central Bank to open two domiciliary accounts (one in dollars and one in naira) for the agency. To round up a year of miracles, Adeyemi also acquired a “gov.ng” domain, which is usually only available to government agencies.
Did our man stop there? What self respecting fraudster, who has managed all of this without a pip from the government, would? He proceeded on “institutional engagements” and even arranged a visit to the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission), and got an audience with the chairman himself. The chairman, who is yet to speak on the matter despite his reputation for a leaky tap, even got handed a plaque/award/whateveryoumaycallit by Adeyemi.
He then got an audience with Benjamin Kalu, the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives where he asked for support for his upcoming “World Investment Summit”. Next, he hosted a “dinner” which was, by all accounts, an extremely glamorous event in Abuja. The event was pitched as capable of drawing roughly $5 trillion in foreign direct investment to Nigeria and was attended by many government officials.
Unfortunately for Adeyemi, the slow grind of the Nigerian bureaucracy was already on its way to crushing his dreams. On October 10, he had a meeting with foreign officials at the Wells Carlton Hotel. The ministry of foreign affairs learnt of this meeting, and cried uncle to the national security adviser, claiming that the meeting was carried out without their knowledge. The argument in the letter wasn’t that Adeyemi was a fraudster, but that the meeting was a procedural breach since the ministry of foreign affairs wasn’t informed. They then wrote to the Chief of Staff to ask for the status of Adeyemi’s agency, since he presumably presented his letter of appointment from the chief of staff as his proof of his legitimacy.
Within a week, the chief of staff wrote back, denying that he knew Adeyemi. The office of the secretary general of the federation then wrote to the chief of staff asking the same question. The answer was the same; the chief of staff denied ever appointing Adeyemi. This, as they say, cooked his goose, and on October 27 Prince Adeyemi, who had hitherto draped his lanky body in an agbada, found himself in handcuffs.
For the presidency, this was the end of the story. It was a quiet fire they had put out, and no one ever had to know. A month later, the prince was arraigned in court — and he somehow got bail for this incredible offense. Part of his bail conditions was to give no interviews on the matter, and keep his stinky mouth shut.
What self respecting fraudster, who had managed all of this without a pip from the government, would?
Here is an interesting rule I live by; people don’t change. They may say they do, and perhaps, on rare occasions, they do. But it is just better for you to assume that they won’t, and make your assumptions from that bedrock. You would be right 99 and half times out of 99 and three quarters.
Femi, or Gbaja as the rest of this article will refer to him, is an interesting fellow. His father was Lateef Gbajabiamila, a man who chaired the Lagos State Sports Council and the National Sports Commission. He schooled in the United States, and actually qualified to practice law in the state of Georgia. For a period in Gbaja’s life, his destiny was tied to America. If he had lived there a few more years, he would likely have become a citizen by now.
However, he had other plans. According to Sahara Reporters (I put this disclaimer because Nigerian politicians can actually disappear you from your home if you write bad things about them on the internet, and I would love to continue enjoying my very expensive rent — but I know even this disclaimer may not help me!), it was during this period that he won a personal injury settlement worth around twenty five thousand dollars for a client. Instead of transferring the money to his client, Gbaja decided to cause her a more intimate personal injury by stealing the money and running back to Nigeria with it. At this point, Gbaja was just three months to elections (which he eventually won), and was probably looking for money to get his candidacy over the line.
His client got wind of this nefarious business, and filed a grievance with the Georgia bar. Gbaja avoided a full disciplinary hearing, which would have led to his disbarment, by formally admitting the theft in a petition, which is an admission of guilt. In that petition, he explicitly admitted to the conduct: accepting the $25,000, depositing it in trust, failing to disburse it, withdrawing it for personal use, and leaving the country. He was also required to pay her back the money, which he did before the bar gave its final judgement. Despite his admission of guilt, the infraction was so serious that the bar imposed a 36-month suspension of his license. This was explicitly a reduced sentence because he admitted the wrong, and made the client whole. If he hadn’t, he would likely have been totally suspended and may have also faced criminal charges.
I don’t know about you, but I tend not to think too highly of people who can steal their client’s money. If he can steal from someone who trusted him with his life, what do you think he would do with Nigeria? Asides from that, Gbaja has been fingered in several other shakedown-pay-for-play scandals, such as when he was accused of accepting bribes from private businessmen to weaken provisions protecting oil-producing host communities in the PIA 2021. Believe it or not, he was also fingered in the scandal that lost Betta Edu her job as an “enabling signatory”. Betta Edu, of course, lost her job. Gbaja didn’t.
So when Prince Adeyemi says that Gbaja is the plug for his job, I don’t think any serious person can say it would be ridiculous. In fact, this accusation, if false, may be genius on Adeyemi’s part. There is no other person in the presidency I would be more inclined to believe were involved in this sort of corrupt business than Mr Gbaja himself.
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Prince Adeyemi’s story gets even stranger, if you can believe it. He never actually says he met Gbaja face to face, or communicated with him one on one. Instead, he argues that he got the appointment letter and paid the bribe through a third party, a fellow named Dolapo Tanimola. Mr Tanimola, in this case, was the fixer who had access and used that access to negotiate the position. If we could get a hand on Mr Tanimola, and if he could explain how he acquired the appointment letter to give Prince Adeyemi, the problem would be solved.
However, in a strange twist of fate, Mr Tanimola died in a fire accident just five days before Prince Adeyemi was arrested. What a tragedy!
With Mr Tanimola’s death, the story changes considerably. Since Prince Adeyemi never actually met Gbaja, or spoke to him, there is no one that can put him at the scene. In fact, we could even surmise that Prince Adeyemi is simply lying against the closest dead man he could find, since dead men tell no tales. Even a sufficiently motivated thinker could argue that Prince Adeyemi might have been involved in the man’s death, as he may have wanted to have sole discretion over the story he chose to tell. All of these exonerating conclusions are only available because Mr Tanimola met his end. How religious do you have to be to believe in that coincidence?
Prince Adeyemi was held by the police for over twenty days before he was formally charged to court. This may seem excessive to you, but given that the police has held politically exposed persons like Nasir El Rufai on charges that sit on even weaker footing for months now, we can say Prince Adeyemi got off really easily.
One may even be shocked that he got out alive at all, as his story is politically disastrous for many highly placed people if it ends up being true. If anything, his survival of police detention may be the one questionable part of his story. If all he says is true, why would he leave alive? Why would he even leave at all?
Prince Adeyemi himself makes that question explicit by claiming to be a victim of assassination plots. To prove this, uploaded pictures of bullet holes on his car. When he was invited on a Channels TV program to clear his name, he declined to appear in person, choosing to phone in instead.
To make things worse, there seems to be an ongoing police man-hunt for Prince Adeyemi. The police has decided his leaky mouth is in violation of his bail conditions actually, and have arrested his father in his place to force him to show up.
Prince Adeyemi is currently willing to give anyone who has any platform an interview. In a recent chat with popular busybody, Very Dark Man, he tells us that he had absolutely nothing to do with the budget passed for the agency he was supposedly running.
You see, while Prince Adeyemi was languishing in prison, someone had inserted an allocation for over a billion naira for the government agency that the presidency now says does not exist. While he was languishing in prison, the national assembly, that is notorious for getting agency heads to defend their budgets, passed the line item. And the presidency, that now claims Prince Adeyemi is nothing but a fraudster, signed the same budget.
I am wary of approbating supernatural powers to anyone who isn’t Lord Jesus, so I am very unwilling to believe that Prince Adeyemi willed this into being. He may have lied about everything else, but our eyes surely cannot deceive us. This agency indeed found its way into the budget debated and passed by two arms of government. And now, the same government wants us to believe that this man is a fraudster? That this agency is nothing but a figment of our imagination?
There are lots of different ways to get scammed in Nigeria. The easiest, and most common, is obtaining by false pretense. Even clever Elewa, who writes these long essays, fell victim twice to two women in the same month. The scam here is simple. The fellow tells you he is someone he is not, and presents some “evidence” to prove the case. You fall for the glitter, and quickly do transfer. Then they block you or — as was in my case — simply never respond to you again.
Now, the more serious the lie in question is, the more complicated the evidence for it must be. A man who wants to make you believe he is best friends with the shakers and movers of the country may only provide a photograph. But if he wants you to pay millions for an appointment, or some obscure contract that would change your life, he surely needs more than that.
He doesn’t need the actual thing, of course. If he had that access, he would use it for his own ends. Who doesn’t want to have the juicy government appointment for himself? Who doesn’t want the billion naira contract for himself?
All he needs, in truth, is the appearance of the thing. The pictures, the media, the assurance that if you googled his name, on your own, with your own phone that you bought with your own money, you would confirm his “evidence”, or as they say, bait. I suspect this was the financial end game for Prince Adeyemi.
When Very Dark Man asked Prince Adeyemi why he paid that much money (if he paid it at all — I do not seriously think this fellow had a four hundred million naira somewhere) to get appointed as director general of some obscure agency, he tells us the God-honest truth. He is desperate to serve his country. He really wants to make impact. He really wants to change Nigeria. Those are the actual words he said. Even now, as the walls of his conspiracy collapses on him, Prince Adeyemi still puts on a brave face, and tells us the lie. What self respecting fraudster, who has achieved this much, wouldn’t?
Of course, we know that Prince Adeyemi is no victim. We know that what the presidency alleges could at least be half true. However, we don’t know if that is precisely why he was chosen to prosecute this fraud — for that would make him even easier to cut off, or whether it was his own fraudulent smarts that gave him the wherewithal to solely engineer incredible scheme from outside Aso Rock.
I can only speculate to the true nature of what really happened here, but here is how I put the pieces together. I believe that Prince Adeyemi was “outed” by people — definitely not just one person — in government who merely intended for him to be a silent partner in their arrangement. One possible explanation is that the agency was intended to become a vehicle for patronage or financial extraction before the arrangement collapsed. That is the only way I see the agency’s budget being passed, despite the DG’s imprisonment.
However, Prince Adeyemi wasn’t content with whatever cut he would have made from that small adventure. He was thinking bigger, so he used all the connects and documentation he had to actually sell the idea of the agency as a real thing. He was likely already promising contracts and high level introductions to people for a “small fee”.
Before he was arrested, he had promised a “World Investment Summit”, a program that was likely a transparent effort at self promotion for even more gullibles to fall into his lap. His “investment dinner” that held in early October was also part of this grand scheme. He was likely already seeing some success too. The dinner was a glamorous affair indeed, and must have cost tens of millions to host, cover and promote. Who do you think provided the funds for that adventure?
Any “political operative” knows Abuja is crawling with shady business people who “need a deal” or an “introduction”. Prince Adeyemi knows these types very well, as he was likely one himself before he was cut into this new deal. And who else would know exactly how to scam these types if not the Prince himself?
Now, we all know that he couldn’t have performed his many miracles without some administrative help at the highest level of government. The people — the real owners of the deal — who cut him in, probably saw his loud self-promotion and realized that he was going to out them with his reckless dash for fame and notoriety. That is why they either expose him, or hands off as he exposed himself. Either way, they are out of the loop — and may have taken Mr Tanimola with them — and Prince Adeyemi is naked and on his own.
I suspect that our Prince (unlike Mr Tanimola) will be unable to provide any sort of correspondence that proves his innocence in this matter. Almost every frank conversation on the nature of this deal would have been held in person, without any record to prove it exists. I doubt he will even be able to point out a single member of the political class who discussed this matter with him. Perhaps his relative uselessness in terms of things he can actually say is why he escaped the police dungeon with his life.
Of course, there is the alternative explanation. Which is that this scam happened exactly how Bayo Onanuga put it. That this fellow, armed with nothing but a forged letter and signature, acquired an audience with the EFCC chairman, three senior civil servants attached to his office, a letter to open two bank accounts in the central bank, an office space in the federal secretariat, and an audience with the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives.
This story, if you can believe it, is actually worse for the country than believing there is some shadowy cabal somewhere arranging arsons to tie up loose ends. It would mean that Prince Adeyemi was only caught because he was sloppy, and there are probably several other fraud entrepreneurs running the same scam in Abuja right now. I would prefer if the country was ruled by competent but corrupt people than to be ruled by characters out of the movie Idiocracy.
Whatever actually happened, what isn’t in doubt is that the president has some serious house cleaning to do. If there is some shadowy cabal giving out appointments to scammers, and coordinating this sort of heist across different departments, he needs to root it out. And if this is actually the case, he cannot pretend to be ignorant about it, as he’s the same fellow who appoints people with sketchy histories into sensitive positions in the first place. Can he really be shocked at this?
If the alternative explanation is correct, and Prince Adeyemi with his (I seriously suspect) second rate brain exploited gaps in the civil service so badly, then he really needs to do some house cleaning. I can excuse self-enrichment, I cannot excuse stupidity. This would mean we do not have a country, and the state apparatus is crawling with schemes of such gigantic proportions that they would be impossible to quantify. If someone like our Prince, who was too stupid to figure out that the chief of staff has no power to appoint anyone, could scam dozens of officials with an appointment letter from a government official without appointment powers, what would a seriously clever chap be doing right now? The idea is too scary to think about.
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