Walking on whited sepulchres:
Gbajabiamila and Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew
By Tunde Akande
Jesus was a master of metaphor, simile and parable. He uses them to invite his audience to think along and be involved in what he taught. Because he did not speak directly to his audience but rather used other objects, things or humans to draw a semblance, he was not offensive but allowed each hearer to think for himself and unravel the meaning.
I’m going to borrow one simile of Jesus in Luke 11: 43 to analyze an important issue that is currently ravaging our nation and talk about what our leaders have been like. I’m optimistic about a certain glorious future for Nigeria. We are going to continue to battle until our whited sepulchers are exposed for who they really are.
In a more readable version, the Good News Bible, Luke 11:44 reads: “How terrible for you! You are like unmarked graves which people walk on without knowing it.” A sepulchre is a whitewashed tomb in Palestine. It houses the decaying corpses of the dead, yet the unaware walk over it freely, defiling themselves without knowing. When it is painted white it symbolizes the grave of a servant who served God but got killed by an unrepentant generation but now painted by another generation in seeming repentance but still continuing in the sin of the past generation. If unmarked, it is the grave of a common man. White, unmarked talk of hypocrisy.
That is the position of the leaders that have ruled Nigeria since 1999. It is the case of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila and the self-styled Director General of the controversial Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), Adeniyi Adeyemi Mathew. Gbajabiamila was speaker of the House of Representatives for eight years, sponsored by his political boss, Bola Tinubu, now the president. When Tinubu became the president, although the chief of staff was not mentioned in the constitution, Tinubu brought Gbajabiamila along with him as his chief of staff, by section 171/(1) and (2) (e) of the 1999 Constitution which empowered him to appoint persons to hold or act in “any office on the personal staff of the President.”
How then is a staff of the president not expressly provided for in the Constitution become more powerful than the president? Nigerians walk on whited sepulchres. The late Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff to former President Muhammadu Buhari, began that power grab when he became the Alpha and Omega of Buhari’s presidency. If Buhari is a lame duck, Bola Tinubu is not; he gives impression that he is in charge.
But many times critical decisions have been made by Gbajabiamila without the knowledge of President Bola Tinubu. While Tinubu was away in France for God knows what, the DG and executives of NTA were sacked and replacements were appointed, which had the imprimatur of Gbajabiamila. When Bola Tinubu returned, he reinstated the DG and executives. But there was no sanction and no explanation.
Barely five months into office, there was rumour that Gbajabiamila was involved in an infraction and would be removed. It took the President to use the occasion of a Federal Executive Council meeting to douse the rumour by expressing his continued confidence in Gbajabiamila without explaining to the public what the issue was. There was also the case of the smuggling of names which the President had not approved into the clemency list. It also fingered Gbajabiamila but nothing was explained and nobody was sanctioned.
Now a bigger infraction is trending concerning the same Femi Gbajabiamila and nobody is telling the nation the truth. The truth of the presidency is full of holes, which the public has generously pointed out. Gbajabiamila is alleged to have constituted a Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC)/Presidential Advisory Council. Femi Gbajabiamila allegedly appointed its Director General, Adeniyi Adeyemi. Gbajabiamila has denied all the allegations and maintained that the DG’s letter of appointment was forged.
Anybody who watched the zeal of President Bola Tinubu in the early days after he was sworn in as president will not doubt that such an office was formed and that it has the imprimatur of somebody close to the president. Tinubu and his team toured multiple countries to solicit foreign investment, hoping it would help ease the country’s economic challenges. It will not be doubtful therefore that somebody higher up in the administration would think of setting up a council, albeit not to serve the nation but the private pockets of some. That is what whited sepulchres do, they pretend to love “we the people,” but indeed only serve their pockets.
Adeniyi Adeyemi comes in here, a man never before known to the governance of Nigeria. Just 38, he attended Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso in his hometown. He attempted to be president of the Student Union Government but failed, but never stopped calling himself the president.
Adeniyi Adeyemi surfaced again in the United Nations calling himself the President of the World Youth Council, which the UN later denied existed. His next port of call was the presidency where he announced himself as the DG of PFIPC. He argues that Gbajabiamila appointed him and gave him a letter to that effect. The intermediary between himself and Gbajabiamila was one Babatunde Tanimola who reportedly died in an alleged hotel fire five days before security agents arrested Adeniyi Adeyemi.
According to reports, he paid N400 million of the N600 million Gbajabiamila allegedly requested for the appointment. He said the fallout stemmed from his refusal to give Gbajabiamila 28 per cent of the council’s take-off grant. The PFIPC has an office in the Federal Secretariat and a N1.4 billion provision in the 2026 budget.
Adeniyi Adeyemi is cocksure he has a deal with Gbajabiamila. He didn’t deny that he paid for the appointment. Adeyemi is very ambitious, he wants offices in all the 36 states of the federation and offices in 127 nations of the world at a time the huge federal bureaucracy should be shrinking. He would have been alternative Ministry of Foreign Affairs with his own ambassadors if the bubble had not burst.
Did Adeniyi Adeyemi lie? Is Gbajabiamila denying his claims to cover up? Adeyemi looked every inch the con artist that Bayo Onanuga, President’s spokesperson called him but that does not exculpate Femi Gbajabiamila. It takes two to tango. A con artist may have just found a nice art gallery to display his art works.
Government has taken Adeniyi Adeyemi to court on criminal charges in which Femi Gbajabiamila is the only witness. Fiery lawyer Femi Falana says Gbajabiamila has a case to answer. If we go by the style of President Bola Tinubu, Gbajabiamila may be let off the the hook, leaving Adeniyi Adeyemi to carry the can. President Tinubu has let some off the hook by just letting them go with their loot.
Beta Edu, dismissed Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Wale Edun, former Finance Minister and former Defence Minister, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, who was said to have left on health grounds when the circumstances of his leaving was a surge in terrorism he was appointed to curb; are glaring examples. If Femi Gbajabiamila is let off the hook, he and Adeniyi Adeyemi will be another examples of whited sepulchres over which Nigerians walk.
Tunde Akande is both a journalist and a pastor. He earned a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos
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