EFCC chair to Peoples Gazette: Retract Ojulari’s forced resignation report or face legal action

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has threatened legal action against online news platform Peoples Gazette over its report on the alleged abduction and forced resignation of the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Bayo Ojulari.

Peoples Gazette had reported that Olukoyede “abducted the head of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Ltd… and forcing him to resign at a secret rendezvous in Abuja.”

The news platform had, on Saturday, August 2, 2025, reported that Olukoyede and the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Adeola Ajayi, pressured Ojulari to sign a resignation letter.

The report added: “Ojulari was repeatedly questioned about what he might know of Olatimbo Ayinde, a British-Nigerian oil businesswoman who has recently emerged as one of the most powerful forces steering the Tinubu Administration.

“Officials said Mr. Ojulari was summoned to the Presidential Villa, where First Lady Remi Tinubu insisted his resignation wouldn’t be accepted. The security chiefs who coerced Mr. Ojulari into the resignation letter had been acting on the order of Olatimbo Ayinde, Mr Tinubu’s paramour, whose growing influence in the administration has recently raised alarm.”

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Reacting via a statement issued on Wednesday by the EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale, the anti-graft agency boss described the report as false and defamatory.

Olukoyede also demanded a full retraction of the report and a public apology from Peoples Gazette within 48 hours.

Failure to comply, the EFCC chairman said, would lead to a lawsuit for defamation.

Oluoyede described the reports as uncharitable and capable of casting him in the mould of someone who has “betrayed and subverted public trust by submitting the authority of his public office and trust as Chairman of the EFCC to the dictates and directives of one Olatimbo Ayinde.”

In a letter addressed to the Editor of Peoples Gazette Limited and signed by Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika (SAN), Olukoyede stressed that “the publications and the imputations conveyed by them are so damning and cannot be ignored or treated with levity.”

The EFCC boss, therefore, demanded that the medium “acknowledge your wrongdoing, expressly admit that what you published and imputed against my client are false, apologise for it unreservedly and retract and pull down the stories from your newspaper website and social media handles.”

The Star