The story between HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso and Mrs Mary Sholoye has been swirling round the social media for quite sometime and it’s been in bits and pieces with each side trying to explain it’s own side of the story.
In fact, Abuja is rife with stories of “power rats” doing what one can call influence peddling for cash. I know of a senior friend who was asked to produce his curriculum vitae for government appointment and after the power rats saw his beautiful CV, they asked him to furnish them with a facilitation fee of Fifty Million Naira in order to pursue the appointment to fruition. Unfortunately my senior friend didn’t have such amount to spare and they further offered to introduce him to someone who could borrow him the Fifty Million Naira of which he was to pay back after he clinches the top government appointment. My friend resisted and the whole deal fell flat. One couldn’t know whether that deal could really have been through to completion because my dear senior couldn’t play through.
So, I got interested in the story of HRH Halimat Tejuoso published in Mirror News on the 3rd of May, 2026 and I decided to peruse through by unbundling the facts in order to enlighten people of how this scenarios sometimes operate. So let’s delve into the facts of the story as further investigations unveiled.
HOW IT ALL STARTED:
Mrs Mary Sholoye is said to have met Olori Tejuoso through a mutual friend. It all started with Olori Tejuoso (not one of the wives of the reverred Oba Tejuoso, the Osile of Oke Ona, Egba, Abeokuta) introduced as a resource person who could help facilitate government contracts for the company of Mrs Sholoye. The story is that inspite of many attempts there wasn’t truly a contract to work on, it was all lies, then, Olori Tejuoso introduced the aspect of facilitating government appointment. According to the purported article of HRH Tejuoso in an online newspaper, Mirror News of 3rd of May, 2023, she was to facilitate a government appointment for Mrs Sholoye through one Mallam Gidado who is said to work at the office of the NSA. She said that she was also promised a Ministerial appointment and had paid sums of money to the tune of about Sixty Million Naira to the said Mallam Gidado.
Investigations showed that Olori Tejuoso actually peddled the influence that she knew top government officials, which was actually found to be a pack of lies. She was merely trying to peddle influence for cash.
Olori Tejuoso told Mrs Sholoye that for her to facilitate the government appointments, she would have to cough out the sum of amounts of money running into hundreds of millions of Naira for official payments and logistics. She also said she has been promised that if the appointment does not scale through, any amount of money collected upfront shall be refunded. She made it clear that there’s an initial request demand of N500Million. According to declaration by EFCC, payments up to about N603 Million Naira were made to HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso. All payments were made through bank transfers. None was made in cash.
TRANSACTION GONE SOUTH:
In fact, Olori Tejuoso in her purported article of 3rd May, 2026 in the Mirror News quoted before in this piece, stated that there were others too that she collected huge sums of money from upfront, who were also seeking government appointments, through one Mallam Ibrahim Gidado, with her as the conduit pipe for money collection from the victims. The victims stated in this alleged serial scam, apart from Mrs Mary Sholoye were Mr Sanni Dantanko, Mr Yakmut Alhassan and Mr Osita Opara. Though there are still other victims of HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso online but not listed in her write up. It should be noted that HRH Tejuoso in the said article and going by the dates had personally paid huge sums to the same said Gidado from around December 2023 to February 2024 and she later got to know that Mallam Gidado was reneging on his promise to get her the government appointment as a Minister, yet she induced and introduced four more victims to the same Mallam Ibrahim Gidado. One needs ask what sort of confidence she reposes in such a person as Mallam Gidado. One need ask whether the two had connived to get the four people scammed ?
But, let’s explore the facts as sourced further.
Between August 2024 to November 2024 when nothing was done in favor of the “official payments” made to Olori Tejuoso, Mrs Mary Sholoye fired a letter demanding for a refund to which Olori Tejuoso replied and agreed in November 2024 to make a refund.
WHEN THE REFUND BECAME IMPOSSIBLE:
After Mrs Mary Sholoye found out that she may have really been scammed by Olori Tejuoso by her peddling of influence without actually knowing or being close to people in power, she demanded for a refund and when no refund seemed to be forthcoming, she fired a petition to the EFCC detailing how she was allegedly scammed under false pretence by HRH Tejuoso. Then, the EFCC went into full motion.
THE EFCC ANGLE:
The EFCC, according to the article of Olori Tejuoso quoted in Mirror News, was invited by the EFCC and she laid it before the anti corruption agency that she was also scammed by Mallam Ibrahim Gidado and that Gidado had vamoosed into thin air. The EFCC thereafter went into full swing searching for Mallam Gidado and after he was apprehended he allegedly confessed that all he got from the deception, false pretence and alleged scam was just the sum of N10 Million Naira.
The EFCC thereafter informed HRH Tejuoso to appear since they’ve apprehended Mallam Gidado who allegedly swindled her. The Olori according to her in her article couldn’t attend to EFCC again because she had developed “brain tumor”, “diabetes mellitus”, “hypertension and other ancillary medical issues”.
The EFCC thereafter charged Mallam Ibrahim Gidado and HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso to Court for obtaining by false pretence but Olori Tejuoso was no where to be found. In fact our sources indicated that Mallam Gidado has since been remanded at Kuje Prison under the order of the Court while Olori Tejuoso remains at large.
Yet, the person who claimed she was suffering from brain tumor, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and other ancillary medical issues and was therefore unable to make herself available to the EFCC in a matter she claimed to be a victim, was able to make herself available able to be appointed and inaugurated as the Women Leader of the City Boys Movement for the South West Zone. Infact, there are pictures of her attending the well deserved and publicised visit of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the United Kingdom recently, where she attended in support of the City Boys Movement.
It is believed that when the EFCC discovered that HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso might be playing games with the anti corruption agency, they declared her a wanted person on the very recently when she failed to honor several invitations. Immediately after she was declared wanted by the EFCC, the City Boys Movement suspended her from the position of the Women Leader of the movement in the South West until the criminal matter she’s involved is resolved. As of the time of writing this piece, it is believed she is still at large.
In fact, it is known that before she was declared as being wanted by EFCC, she had before filed a suit at a court in Abuja suing Mrs Mary Sholoye for defamation. The information being gathered from the Court is that she has not diligently pursued the matter but we will not discuss more on that matter since it is sub judice, that is it is before a Court.
So, one is surprised by the news article reported in the Mirror News and some other online newspapers in which HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso is trying to present herself as a victim of fraud whereas she seems to be the main person at the center of the whole debacle. We will implore that instead of putting up the propaganda in social media, HRH Halimat Adenike Tejuoso should make herself available to the EFCC so that the course of justice can better be served. We will implore her to note the often quoted legal reasoning that though the wheel of justice may grind slowly, yet it surely grinds.