Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, the self-styled director-general of the disputed Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), was finally captured on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, ending a days-long manhunt that stretched from Abuja to a quiet village in Osun State’s Ijesaland.
Adeyemi’s arrest came after Justice Mohammed Umar of the Federal High Court in Abuja issued a bench warrant earlier that same day, following the suspect’s fifth consecutive failure to appear in court. His lawyer, Genesis Francis, told the court he had been unable to convince his client to attend, citing alleged threats to Adeyemi’s life. Frustrated, the police lawyer, Wisdom Madaki, then applied for the warrant, and Justice Umar granted it, directing all security agencies to arrest Adeyemi wherever he was found.
“Since then, this case has become a matter of public importance, and there have been many threats to his life,” Adeyemi’s defence lawyer told the court, according to Vanguard News.
Within hours, operatives moved. According to security sources, the Department of State Services had already been trailing Adeyemi for roughly five days before the operation was handed over to the police Force Intelligence Department/Intelligence Response Team (FID-IRT). During that stretch, Adeyemi reportedly went underground in Osun State and switched off his phones for about two days to dodge detection.
Eventually, a team led by an officer identified as Moses Lohor stormed his hideout in a village in Ijesaland and picked him up in the early hours of Tuesday. Osun State Police spokesperson DSP Abiodun Ojelabi confirmed the operation, though he clarified that the state command itself played no direct role.
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“We are aware that the individual parading himself as the Director-General of the controversial PFIPC, Adeyemi, was picked up today in the state. The team that effected the arrest came from the Force Headquarters in Abuja. He was picked up in the early hours by operatives of the Force Intelligence Department–Intelligence Response Team (FID-IRT),” Ojelabi said.
Force Public Relations Officer CSP Okokon Iniedu also confirmed the development in Abuja, describing the arrest as having taken place “without incident.”
“We have just confirmed the arrest of Mr. Adeniyi Adeyemi by a team of the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) in Osun State,” Iniedu said.
Immediately after his capture, officers moved Adeyemi out of Osun and en route to Abuja for interrogation, according to police sources. Video footage that circulated shortly afterward showed him being questioned by operatives at the scene. Investigators say they now intend to press him on how the PFIPC was set up, whether the documents used to establish it were genuine, and whether other individuals inside government helped the scheme survive undetected for so long.
In court, meanwhile, proceedings moved forward without him. Justice Umar noted that the charges against Adeyemi, filed on November 27, 2025, had already dragged through five adjournments, all at the defendant’s instance. Consequently, the judge adjourned the case to September 30, 2026, when Adeyemi is now expected to be formally arraigned on an eight-count charge bordering on conspiracy, forgery, and impersonation.
Notably, this was not Adeyemi’s first brush with detention. He was first arrested on October 27, 2025, by the Police Monitoring Unit following a petition from the Office of the Chief of Staff, and held for 23 days before his release. Investigators say that during that period, they uncovered that he allegedly operated 34 bank accounts, including nine tied to fictitious government agencies.
Since his release last year, Adeyemi has remained defiant in public. Just a day before his rearrest, he appealed to President Bola Tinubu to set up an independent, multi-stakeholder panel to investigate the PFIPC controversy and the disputed ₦1.3 billion budget allocation. He has also continued to insist that Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila collected ₦400 million through a proxy in exchange for his appointment letter, an allegation Gbajabiamila’s office has firmly denied.
As of now, Adeyemi remains in police custody pending further interrogation. Investigators are expected to examine a long list of exhibits tied to the case, including a note verbale allegedly sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, purported approvals to open Central Bank of Nigeria accounts, and correspondence seeking land and office space across Nigeria’s 36 states. With the court date now set for September 30, attention turns to whether the coming weeks of interrogation will produce new names, or new charges, in a scandal that has already shaken confidence in the federal bureaucracy.
Adeyemi arrest Osun | Sojworldnews will continue to update this story as it develops.
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