Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, has threatened a ₦10 billion defamation suit against Adeniyi Adeyemi, the disputed “director-general of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC)”, over allegations of murder and bribery.
In a letter signed by Kemi Pinheiro, Gbajabiamila’s counsel, the chief of staff gave Adeyemi 72 hours to take down all videos and comments in which he made several allegations against the president’s chief of staff.
He asked Adeyemi to publish an apology and a full retraction in at least five national newspapers and on social media, where his press conference of June 26 was circulated.
Pinheiro labelled the allegations from Adeyemi as “malicious, reckless and entirely without factual foundation” and targeted at showing Gbajabiamila as “corrupt, morally bankrupt, and a murderer”.
He was therefore asked to “cease and desist from making, repeating, publishing or causing to be published any further defamatory statements concerning our client” and also “provide our law firm with a written undertaking that you shall refrain from making any further defamatory statements concerning our client”.
The law firm said that “unless the foregoing demands are fully complied with within 72 hours of your receipt of this letter, our Client shall, without further reference to you, commence appropriate legal proceedings against you”, including lodging a criminal petition/complaint against “you for criminal defamation of our client in line with extant laws of the F.C.T.”
“Commencing civil proceedings where we shall, on behalf of our client, seek amongst others the sum of ₦10,000,000,000.00 (Ten Billion Naira Only) as aggravated and exemplary damages which shall be paid to a charity or charities of our client’s choice,” the letter read in part.
Gbajabiamila, via the firm, also threatened a “perpetual injunction restraining any further defamatory publication and a mandatory order compelling the publication of an apology and retraction”.
