Gboyega Oyetola

Adegboyega Isiaka Oyetola (born 29 September 1954 in Iragbiji, Boripe LGA, Osun State) is a former insurance executive who became the long-serving Chief of Staff to Governor Rauf Aregbesola (2011-2018), the Governor of Osun State (27 November 2018 - 27 November 2022) on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform, and — since 21 August 2023 — Federal Minister of Marine and Blue Economy under President Bola Tinubu, occupying a portfolio newly carved out of the old Ministry of Transportation. He is a known relative and trusted political associate of President Tinubu. In office in Osun he was one of the APC's leading 'orderly succession' governors; he lost his bid for re-election on 17 July 2022 to Senator Ademola Adeleke (PDP), whose return to power in November 2022 reframed the political handling of every fiscal matter that crossed the handover. Three distinct integrity controversies have followed him into national office, each of which Oyetola and the Osun APC have publicly denied and characterised as political. First, on 7 March 2025 the Adeleke-led Osun State Government formally petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), seeking criminal investigation of Oyetola and named former officials over the disbursement of a USD 20,000,000 World Bank health intervention grant that was meant to renovate 320 primary healthcare centres across Osun's 30 LGAs and Modakeke area office. The petition — drawing on the report of a state Contract Review Committee said by the Osun government to have been at work since early 2023 — alleges that Oyetola, as chair of the Special Health Intervention Committee, awarded contracts without competitive bidding to politically connected entities (including, by the state government's account, Poshpreneurs Nig., Dotfam Multiventures Ltd, The Ice Firms Nig. Ltd and Afamoks Web International), and that, separately, NGN 1,500,000,000 was laundered through the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) Osun account at Zenith Bank between January and October 2022, including via the personal account of Akeem Ibitoye, then Director of Finance at Ejigbo Local Government, with daily cash withdrawals of NGN 10 million to NGN 100 million. The Osun APC and Oyetola's media team have dismissed the petition as 'shadow chasing', insisted that all contracting followed due process, and called for the EFCC to ignore it as politically motivated; a PDP federal lawmaker, Hon. Wale Raji, publicly apologised to Oyetola, calling the petition a witch-hunt. Second, on 9 January 2026 Sally Tibbot Consulting Limited — represented by its CEO, Sa'adat Bakrin Ottun, and counsel, Jiti Ogunye SAN — held a Lagos press conference at which it accused the Osun State Government of refusing to act on its 2024 forensic audit of the state's January 2023 payroll, which it said had uncovered 8,448 ghost workers and 6,713 ghost pensioners costing the state about NGN 1.14 billion a month, or NGN 13,700,000,000 a year. The Osun State Government, through its commissioner for finance and a re-verification panel, replied that of the 8,448 names 8,015 were confirmed as genuine staff and only 433 unreachable, with similarly large reversals on the pensioners side, and accused Sally Tibbot of inflating figures to drive up its consultancy commission (an exposure the state has since quantified as roughly NGN 2 billion at the inflated figure versus about NGN 47 million at the verified figure). Adeleke's chief press secretary, Olawale Rasheed, then publicly re-attributed the alleged payroll fraud to the Oyetola administration, telling THISDAY, Hallmark, Arise TV and TheCable that any irregularity unearthed by Sally Tibbot would have been embedded in a payroll system inherited from 2018-2022. The Osun APC and Sally Tibbot itself dispute that framing: APC lawmakers and the firm say the audited transactions covered January 2023 to June 2024 — i.e. wholly within Adeleke's first term — and Oyetola's camp has therefore rejected liability. Governor Adeleke subsequently wrote both the ICPC and the EFCC in February 2026 inviting them to probe the entire chain. Third, the October 2021 ICIJ-led Pandora Papers leak — reported in Nigeria by Premium Times and TheCable — disclosed that Oyetola was a named director and shareholder of two BVI offshore entities (Aranda Overseas Corporation and Global Investments Offshore Limited), and that on 18 October 2017, while serving as Aregbesola's Chief of Staff, Aranda acquired 32 Grove End Road, St John's Wood, London — a property previously held by Kola Aluko's BVI shell Zavlil Holdings Ltd and the subject of a Nigerian federal asset-freeze proceeding against Aluko — for £9,000,000, a price Premium Times calculated to be roughly £8,000,000 below open-market value. Oyetola, through his media aides Ismail Omipidan and later other spokespersons, flatly denied any business relationship with Kola Aluko, said he had resigned both directorships in 2011 on appointment to public office, surrendered his shareholding, and committed no infraction. The Code of Conduct Bureau under Prof. Mohammed Isah opened a Pandora Papers review in November 2021; the EFCC also opened a parallel inquiry covering several named Nigerians. Across all three matters, there has, as of May 2026, been no formal arraignment of Mr Oyetola in any court. The aggregate posture is therefore best described as 'investigation' (named EFCC petition pending, ICPC intelligence on Sally Tibbot, Pandora Papers disclosure on record) rather than prosecution.