KEY POINTS
- Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila said he almost lost his job over alleged support for Lagos lawmaker Desmond Elliot.
- President Tinubu summoned him to confront intelligence linking Elliot to the controversial impeachment of Speaker Mudashiru Obasa.
- The DSS director-general later contacted Gbajabiamila over the same allegations, deepening the political fallout in Surulere APC.
Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, Femi Gbajabiamila, said he nearly lost his job in Aso Rock over alleged ties to Desmond Elliot, the Lagos State lawmaker who allegedly helped orchestrate the controversial impeachment of Speaker Mudashiru Obasa.
Gbajabiamila disclosed the close call in a video circulating Thursday, recounting how Tinubu summoned him to the president’s Abuja residence at the peak of the Lagos Assembly crisis and confronted him over intelligence implicating Elliot.
Now the disclosure pulls the curtain back on a previously private Aso Rock confrontation, framing the Lagos State House of Assembly impeachment row as a moment of acute personal risk for the chief of staff.
Tinubu’s question
Specifically, Gbajabiamila said Tinubu opened the meeting with a pointed question. “I hear this Desmond is your boy,” he quoted the president as saying. The chief of staff answered in the affirmative.
Indeed, the president then told him that intelligence reports placed Elliot among the lawmakers driving Obasa’s removal. Gbajabiamila said he protested, telling the president that Elliot had not been part of the move and that he had not even spoken to the lawmaker.
“I’m telling you from intelligence that he is part of them. Go and tell him to retrace his steps,” Gbajabiamila quoted Tinubu as saying. The chief of staff said he accepted the instruction and contacted Elliot to relay the warning, urging him to step away if he was involved.
DSS adds pressure
Moreover, three days later, the Director-General of the State Security Service called Gbajabiamila with a fresh warning. The chief of staff said the DSS chief told him his name was surfacing in connection with Elliot’s alleged role in the impeachment plot.
“Three days later, the Director General of SSS called me and said there’s a problem. Your name is being mentioned all over the place. That you are the one behind, you are supporting Desmond in this event,” Gbajabiamila said.
Furthermore, the chief of staff again denied involvement and said he advised Elliot to publicly deny the allegations. He added that the Lagos lawmaker has yet to issue any such statement, a silence that has continued to fuel speculation about his loyalties.
Surulere primary in focus
Additionally, the revelation lands amid a Surulere constituency battle inside the All Progressives Congress, with stakeholders accusing associates of Gbajabiamila of trying to influence the succession to Elliot’s seat. Reports have flagged a female aspirant with ties to Gbajabiamila’s camp as a preferred candidate, fueling accusations of imposition.
Meanwhile, Obasa’s removal and his subsequent reinstatement, allegedly at Tinubu’s intervention, given the president’s own Lagos roots. Elliot represents Surulere, the same constituency Gbajabiamila held in the House of Representatives before stepping into Aso Rock.
However, party stakeholders have urged the chief of staff not to back Elliot’s fourth-term ambition, arguing that the actor-turned-politician’s long stay in the Assembly rested on the political cover Obasa once provided.
Together, the Aso Rock summons, the DSS warning and the Surulere primary jostle paint a picture of a chief of staff weighing loyalty to a constituency ally against the political weight of his principal. Yet for now, Gbajabiamila has kept his job and made the political risks of the Lagos crisis publicly visible, with the next move sitting squarely with Elliot, who must decide whether to deny the allegations or carry the weight of them into the next primary.
