As the PFIPC scandal centres on Femi Gbajabiamila and Adeniyi Adeyemi, fresh details have emerged on Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola, the alleged intermediary who died from severe burns sustained in a October 2025 Abuja hotel fire.
When the controversy over the phantom Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) erupted, public attention quickly shifted to two men at the centre of the dispute — Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, and Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, who claimed to be the council’s Director-General.
Largely overlooked was a third figure: Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola, who died at the National Hospital, Abuja, in October 2025 after sustaining severe burns in a fire at Kachi Hotel, according to a police investigation report.
Daily Trust reports that Adeyemi had claimed Gbajabiamila issued him the appointment and that he paid N400 million to Gbajabiamila through Tanimola to facilitate it, alleging he never met Gbajabiamila in person but communicated through Tanimola, who allegedly handled the financial arrangements.
Adeyemi further claimed Gbajabiamila demanded 48 per cent of the PFIPC’s proposed N27.4 billion take-off grant, a request he said he rejected, and alleged Tanimola died under suspicious circumstances.
Gbajabiamila has strongly denied the allegations, saying he never met Adeyemi, never authorised anyone to collect money on his behalf, and had no knowledge of Tanimola or the alleged transactions. The Presidency has disowned the PFIPC as fictitious, and Gbajabiamila last week threatened a N10 billion defamation suit against Adeyemi.
According to a source close to the deceased, Tanimola, 42, was asleep at Kachi Hotel when smoke filled the building on October 9, 2025. As he tried to escape, he was reportedly pushed amid the panic, sustaining burns to 53 per cent of his body before fleeing and boarding a tricycle to the National Hospital’s Trauma Centre, where he died on October 22.
Another source said unknown men had visited Tanimola at the hospital, offering to move him to a facility in Minna, Niger State — an offer his family declined.
The Federal Fire Service confirmed responding to a fire at a commercial building in Utako, FCT, around the same period.
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