If presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga is to be believed, the so called director, Adeyemi Adeniyi Matthew, of a so called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council or PFIPC should appear in court in about three weeks from now. That is on July 27 to answer multiple charges of impersonation and forgery. The issue centres around one question: does the PFIPC exist or not? If it does, is it a creation of the law or a shape shifting phantom that exists only in the fecund imagination of the man who says he is the director of the council? The man, Adeyemi Adeniyi Matthew, also claims to be a prince, perhaps of a kingdom the world is yet to know about. Prince Adeyemi Adeniyi Matthew, to accord him full honours, is currently enmeshed in a battle of epic proportions with one man who has the entire structure of federal might behind him.
We are talking here of the president’s chief of staff and long time player in the corridors of power, Femi Gbajabiamila, or Gbaja in popular language. Mr. Gbajabiamila is also a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. He is the one with whom Prince Adeyemi (this seems to me to be his last name, in which case the “natural” order of his names should be Prince Matthew Adeniyi Adeyemi or Prince Matthew Adeyemi Adeniyi) has locked horns. While we await the court hearings, one thing that is emerging from the build up of Prince Adeyemi’s profile is that he is a confidence trickster who operates mainly as an influence peddler. But no matter the level of his confidence or the depth of his trickery, one doesn’t require a babalawo to tell one he didn’t act alone. He has his enablers at different points along the way, and many of them obviously reside in the highest echelon of power, not necessarily or exclusively in the presidency.
