By Charles Pemu 
The Senior Special Assistant on Publicity and Communications to the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, Mr. Lere Olayinka, has strongly defended his principal’s confrontational conduct with a naval officer, alleging that the clash stemmed from a complex fraudulent land transaction that misled a former Chief of Naval Staff (CNS).
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, Olayinka revealed that the disputed plot, located in the Mabushi area of Abuja, was initially designated for park and recreation purposes, not private or commercial development.
Olayinka clarified that the land was first allocated in 2007 to Santos Estate Limited for park and recreation use. Crucially, when the company sought to convert the land use to commercial purposes in 2022, the FCT Administration rejected the request, even before Wike became Minister.
The aide accused the company of proceeding anyway: “Probably in anticipation of the minister’s approval for conversion, the man decided to partition the land, a land allocated to him for park and recreation. He now partitioned the land and sold it to people, including the former Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo (retd).”
Olayinka claimed that the former Naval Chief was deceived in the transaction: “That is why I want to say that the Chief of Naval Staff was scammed.”
He alleged that instead of pursuing legal redress against the company that fraudulently sold the land, the retired naval officer chose to “resort to use military might” to claim ownership and protect the illegal structure.
Olayinka firmly maintained that the land, which is situated on a road corridor in Mabushi, is zoned strictly for public and corporate buildings, not residential housing, and insisted that Vice Admiral Gambo “does not have a document, a title document, showing that he owns the land. He does not own the land.”
Furthermore, the Minister’s aide argued that even if Gambo possessed a valid title, he failed to follow the due process of obtaining building plan approval from the development control before commencing construction.