The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has recounted how he allegedly escaped a blackmail plot involving claims that his son received $2 million in exchange for a land allocation while he was serving as a minister.
Speaking during a media parley on Thursday, Wike said a man falsely alleged that he paid his son the money, but investigators later established that his son was outside Nigeria when the alleged transaction was said to have taken place.
“As I’m sitting as the minister of FCT, somebody has done that, claiming that he knows my children, and that there was a day that he was with my son, and that my son called dad, ‘Is any land available?’, and I said yes. And that they gave him two million U.S. dollars. So look at the game,” Wike said.
He explained that the alleged plot came to his attention after a contact at the Presidential Villa informed him that someone was circulating the claims.
“Somebody called me from the Villa that he has this thing going on. I said, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘Oh, you get this document for me.’ Somebody’s trying to do it. I said, ‘Okay, no problem.’ I sent my CSO: ‘Go and get this person.’ We got him arrested. He said that two million was given at night, that’s 9 p.m., 8 p.m., two million dollars,” he said.
According to Wike, investigators verified that his son had travelled out of the country on a British Airways flight on the morning of the day the alleged payment was said to have been made.
“But see how, unknown to him, that day in the morning, my son travelled on British Airways. Meanwhile, the money was given at night. So we had to tell the police. They went to British Airways, everything,” he said.
The minister said he later rejected suggestions to quietly settle the matter.
“One of them came to me and said, ‘Look, before it embarrasses you, why not settle it?’ I said, ‘Settle what? Settle what? This is cheap blackmail. I will not allow that.’ And we didn’t do it,” he said.
Wike said the incident illustrated how senior government officials are often targeted with fabricated allegations intended to damage their reputations, drawing a comparison with allegations made by Adeniyi Adeyemi against the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila.
“There are people you target in government to do bad thing to the boss. This is chief of staff. This is the person who is in charge of finance and secretary to government. If you want to embarrass any government, this is the first target,” he said.
He argued that Adeyemi should have presented any evidence to security agencies instead of making the allegations publicly.
“If it was indeed correct, eyeball to eyeball, go to the security agency. Look at my communications with him. Look at the phone I’ve been talking with him. These are what we have done,” he said.
The controversy stems from allegations made by Adeyemi, who claimed that Gbajabiamila demanded 48 per cent of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council’s alleged N27.4 billion take-off grant and received N400 million through proxies linked to appointments in the agency.
The Presidency has maintained that the PFIPC is a fictitious body, although it appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Act with a N1.3 billion allocation. President Bola Tinubu has directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission to investigate the matter within 30 days.
Adeyemi is also facing forgery charges before the Federal High Court in Abuja over an alleged appointment letter bearing Gbajabiamila’s signature. He is scheduled to return to court on July 27, while Gbajabiamila’s lawyers have threatened him with a N10 billion defamation suit.
