₦airaland Forum

Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has asked President Bola Tinubu to suspend Femi Gbajabiamila, chief of staff, to allow for “unfettered” investigation of allegations against him.

In a statement issued by Paul Ibe, media aide, on Tuesday, Atiku said “silence and indifference” cannot take away the “unfolding” corruption allegations against Gbajabiamila.

The former vice-president cited how former President Muhammadu Buhari suspended Babachir Lawal, secretary to the government of the federation, to allow for investigation, adding that Gbajabiamila should not be treated differently.

Atiku expressed shock over the recent allegations of “illegally cornering tens of billions of naira in oil and gas royalties from petroleum regulatory commission, citing a fake law for presidential approval” levelled against Gbajabiamila.

The former vice-president said Tinubu’s administration “can’t pretend to be prosecuting opposition figures for corruption, while corruption is growing like weed under its own nose”.

“You can’t preach the rule of law when your own officials are awarded with the trophy of untouchability,” Atiku said.

“Gbajabiamila must be held accountable like every other public official and independently investigated to give him full opportunity to defend himself against the brazen act of corruption as detailed in the Gazette report.

“Former President Buhari suspended his SGF Babachir Lawal from office in order to allow for unfettered investigation against him and Gbajabiamila shouldn’t be treated differently.”

Gbajabiamila has been under fire following allegations by Adeniyi Adeyemi, director-general of the presidential foreign intervention promotion council (PFIPC), that the chief of staff obtained N400 million bribe to provide him an appointment letter.

Despite the absence of any legal framework or presidential declaration establishing it, PFIPC operated like a government agency, receiving an allocation in the 2026 budget, occupying an office at the federal secretariat and also recruiting staff.

BABACHIR LAWAL’S SACK

In April 2017, late Buhari suspended Lawal as SGF following allegations of violations of law and due process in the award of contracts under the Presidential Initiative on the North-East (PINE).

The suspension was pending the outcome of the findings of the three-member panel instituted to probe the allegations.

After some months, Lawal was sacked and Boss Mustapha was announced as the replacement.

In June, Lawal and Atiku clashed after the former SGF resigned from the ADC over allegations that the party’s primaries were manipulated in favour of the Atiku and his associates.

The former SGF claimed the exercise was rigged at multiple levels to benefit the former vice-president.

SlavaUkraini:
https://www.thecable.ng/atiku-to-tinubu-suspend-gbaja-to-allow-probe-as-buhari-did-babachir-lawal/

Angelfrost:
Erm... Wait fess... Are you telling me Gbaja is still in that office?!!

You mean he has neither resigned nor been suspended pending completion of investigation?!!


...You people are not serious in this 3rd world nation.

9jatriot:
So far, since I started hearing the outcry against Gbaja, I have not heard a single piece of evidence that Gbaja is involved. All I have heard is that this guy claims to have used a 3rd party to reach Gbaja. He has not said he ever met or spoke to him on the phone except through this so called 3rd party.

Secondly, when pressed for this 3rd party to know if he/she truly exists, he goes ahead to claim that the person had died. Once again, a very convenient piece of hearsay news.

In fact, according to Premium Times, Gbaja was the first person to write to the police to investigate the situation since October of 2025. The only thing I want to know is how a matter of this gravity that was reported to the police since October of 2025 has not been wrapped up since then.

Gotocourt:
Look at it this way, who's heading the committee/Agency for budget money to be allocated. Who smuggled it into the budget.
Abi PFIC was included by a 👻 👽.

Angelfrost:
Erm... Wait fess... Are you telling me Gbaja is still in that office?!!

You mean he has neither resigned nor been suspended pending completion of investigation?!!


...You people are not serious in this 3rd world nation.

bigwig071:
How Would You Justify The Following Extravagant Spendings Under Tinubu's Government:

1. 21 Billion Naira To Renovate The Vice President House. No like they bought new kidneys or anything...for a house already functional. Done with public funds.

2. 70 Billion Naira To The National Assembly Members To Buy SUVs At The Cost 160 Million Naira Per One For Senators And House Of Representatives Members Specifically. To buy silence is every expensive.

3. 4 Billion Naira To Renovate Dodan Barrack Lagos Another 3 Billion Naira To Renovate Aguda House

4. 5 Billion Naira Was Given To Presidential Tax Reforms Committee Of Less Than Twenty People Headed By Taiwo Oyedele With Nothing To Show For It

6. 1.5 Billion Naira To Purchase Cars For Your Wife Senator Oluremi Tinubu Despite The Fact That First Lady Office Is Not Recognised By Our Constitution. Public funds they will later come around and claim they donated.

7. 300% Salary Increase For The Judges Which Was Speedily Passed By The Insensitive And Irresponsible Senators. The law has been bought.

8. 5 Billion Naira Was Budgeted For Presidential Fleet Of Cars For President Bola Ahmad Tinubu. I mean for someone who already has over 40 cars following him already.

9. 5 Billion equally budgeted for Presidential Yatch. The commonwealth is now a personal wealth.

10. 225 Billion naira spent on so-called Presidential Jet Festus Keyamo compensated.

11. 90 Billion naira spent on 2024 Hajj pilgrimage . Religion is a personal business. This is extravagant and irrelevant.

12. Billions of Naira Was Budgeted For Trips Including The Vice President Kashim Shettima To The Detriment Of The Citizens

13. Every Senator Is Paid 21 Million Naira Monthly

14. House Of Representatives Are Earning 13.5 Million Monthly All The Increment Was Done By Tinubu's Government

15. 15 Trillion Naira Lagos Calabar Coastal Road Was Awarded Illegally To Tinubu's Friend A Lebanese Gilbert Chagoury Who Was Repatriated Back To His Country By The Former President Obasanjo. I mean "awarded." No bids.

16. Billions lavished to lobbyist to romance against the Christian genocide.

17. How about the crazy number of ministers doing nothing?

18. N36Billion used shamelessly to Repaint the International Conference Centre...

Nigeria is a rich country. But ruled by the worst.

Argue with yourself.

SixSeven:
💯
During her husband's presidency (2010–2015), critics frequently accused her of overstepping her constitutional boundaries by trying to dictate political appointments and warring with state governors, notably Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State.

Maybe our people choose to have selective memory. While addressing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) supporters at a rally in Calabar, she explicitly told the crowd to assault political opponents who campaigned under the slogan of "change". She openly stated, "Anybody that tells you change, stone that person."

In 2012, the Governor of Bayelsa State abruptly appointed her as a Permanent Secretary in the state's civil service. This sparked widespread public outrage, with critics calling it a "national embarrassment" and a textbook example of nepotism, given that she had been away from active civil service for over 13 years.


Buhari's own is recent except people still want to have selective amnesia.

Turai and Stella were silent in their own style but no one can forget the role of Turai when her husband was AWOL. When President Yar'Adua was hospitalized for months in Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2010, Turai strictly controlled all physical and information access to him. She blocked senior government officials, including the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan from seeing or speaking to the President.

Why We Seized Turai Yar’adua’s Land - Abuja Minister
https://www.nairaland.com/1278999/why-seized-turais-land-minister#15550811

In 2008, Turai used her position to host a massive high- society fundraiser for her NGO to build an International Cancer Centre in Abuja. Billions of Naira were donated by state governors, wealthy businessmen, and government contractors. Decades later, the project remains a ghost town. The multi-billion-naira facility was abandoned, and hundreds of vehicles and specialized medical equipment bought with public and donated funds were left to rust away. Investigative journalists and government health ministries launched probes into the project, questioning how billions vanished while ordinary Nigerians continued to fly abroad for cancer treatments. In the final days of her husband's administration in 2010, the land was allocated to Turai's NGO, the Women and Youth Empowerment Foundation (WAYEF). Later, the government revoked it, claiming it was public land meant for the African First Ladies Peace Mission. It was subsequently handed over to her successor, Patience Jonathan. Turai sued the sitting government and Patience Jonathan, refusing alternative land offers. In 2013, the court ruled in Turai's favor. The FCT Minister publicly blasted her, accusing her of using her twilight days as First Lady to illegally convert public institutional land for personal NGO use.


The biggest political scandal tied directly to Stella Obasanjo broke in early 2005, regarding the privatization of federal government property in Lagos. An anonymous whistleblower revealed that 207 prime government-owned properties in luxury estates like Ikoyi were being sold quietly at highly reduced, non-market prices to top officials. To the deep embarrassment of President Obasanjo-who had campaigned heavily on an anti-corruption platform-almost the entire Abebe family (Stella's maiden family) was discovered on the list of secret buyers. President Obasanjo was forced to publicly cancel the entire housing deal and summarily fired his Minister of Housing, Mobolaji Osomo, for mishandling the allocations. Newspaper editors who labeled her "Greedy Stella" over the affair were arrested by state security, causing a massive free-speech outcry.

Unlike previous administrations where the wives of the Vice President and state governors enjoyed prominent public platforms, Stella was heavily criticized for attempting to centralize all female political power in Nigeria under herself. In 2003, she summoned the wives of all 36 state governors to Abuja and explicitly declared, "There is only one First Lady in Nigeria." She banned them from using the title "First Lady" within their respective states, ordering them to restrict themselves to "Wife of the Governor." Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and other civil rights activists fiercely criticized her behavior. Soyinka denounced her as "arrogant" and publicly urged President Obasanjo to restrain his wife's unconstitutional excesses, calling the office of the First Lady an ostentatious, vulgar carry-over from military dictatorship.

Tragically, on October 23, 2005, Stella died at the age of 59 due to severe surgical malpractice. Her death itself became a flashpoint for intense public criticism regarding the elite's behavior. The irony of her death was not lost in sight when it was revealed that she had secretly flown to Marbella, Spain, to undergo an elective cosmetic surgery (liposuction) right before her 60th birthday (Her Spanish surgeon was later convicted of negligent homicide after puncturing her internal organs and leaving her unattended for hours).

The Nigerian public reacted with a mixture of grief and anger. Critics noted the tragic irony that while ordinary Nigerians were suffering under a collapsing national healthcare system, the First Lady flew to an expensive European resort town for an elective aesthetic procedure.

Since Abacha died, we have had a first lady die, a president fall ill, another president fall ill, a president's wife (Aisha) complain about state hospital but the country never learns, it's just one person who takes over after the next and nothing changes.

Please continue to post facts that this olodo uprising will refuse to do a simple google search on their phone and be pushing ideas in their head without verification. You don't even need to be alive at that time but simple search will save you. I am not interested in the women because they are spouses to the person we elected. They have no business with us and while Buhari was criticized for saying his wife belonged to the kitchen and other room, maybe he knew what he meant. If that's the way he wanted his wife to be, who knows her better than he does? Because all the Aso Rock trouble we heard after that was enough to understand the statement. Anyway, there is no office of the first lady and we need to stop indulging them. It's corruption and no one will want to touch the President's wife but we must give commendation to Obasanjo for how he handled the Ikoyi houses allocation scandal. When the whistleblower leaked the list of secret buyers, revealing that almost the entire Abebe family (his wife Stella's relatives) had been allocated prime government property at heavily discounted prices, Obasanjo did not attempt a cover-up. Despite the immense pressure it put on his marriage, he immediately canceled the entire luxury housing deal. To prove his anti-corruption drive wasn't just rhetoric, Obasanjo immediately fired his Minister of Housing, Mobolaji Osomo, for allowing the non-transparent, nepotistic allocation process to happen in the first place. He made it clear that nobody-regardless of their connections to the First Lady was above the law.


Again, I want that office removed although it does not exist because we feed it oxygen. I can commend all the first ladies for their NGOs and empowerment schemes but I also consider those things as conduit pipe to siphon state money indirectly. They can be an interference to the Ministry of Women's affairs. IYKYK