By a Political Analyst and Columnist, Pamela O.
Nigeria has grown familiar with a particular species of public figure: the activist whose volume rises and falls with political opportunity.
Deji Adeyanju, lawyer, former PDP new-media operator, convener of Concerned Nigerians, and frequent social-media combatant, has become a textbook illustration of the type.
His trajectory—from campus agitation and repeated arrests under military and civilian regimes, through partisan media work, into full-time protest and then the Bar—has been framed by supporters as principled resistance.
To many observers, it reads more as a series of transactions in which criticism is deployed against those who do not pay, and muted or redirected once incentives shift.
Adeyanju’s early record includes student-union leadership and activism dating back to the Abacha years.
He has spoken of multiple detentions and of studying law precisely because of those experiences, eventually graduating with a first-class degree from Baze University and being called to the Bar in 2024.
He now runs a firm that takes human-rights and criminal cases, including pro-bono work for protesters and activists. That is real yet many still use the lenses of allegedly convicted cultist or murderer to interpret what really drives him and what he does. Court records show he was charged in connection with a killing in his student days, acquitted in 2009, rearrested years later on the same facts, and acquitted again in 2019 on double-jeopardy grounds. Fact-checks have repeatedly described the “jailed for murder” narrative as overstretched of the facts he has never been convicted but the more durable critique concerns consistency.
In 2016 Adeyanju publicly praised Peter Obi as “the kind of mentor we should always hype in this country.” Years later the tone inverted. He has called Obi a fraud, a religious bigot, a political prostitute, and an “idiot,” threatened to release a “Yes Daddy” audio, and alleged that Obi offered him an envelope of cash during a private pre-2023 meeting—an offer Adeyanju says he rejected. Obi’s team has treated the attacks as defamatory; Adeyanju has dared him to sue and has stated that, if the opposition fields Obi in 2027, he would rather vote for Bola Tinubu. The explanation he offers is the intolerance of some Obidient supporters and Obi’s own political mobility across parties.
Critics see a simpler pattern: earlier praise when Obi was not yet a peak threat or target, later sustained assault once alignment or payment did not materialise.
This is the transactional model in outline. Activism becomes a transferable asset. Past positive statements are discarded when the subject no longer “comes with a price” or when a higher bidder—or a more convenient target—appears.
Adeyanju has denied being for sale and has recounted rejecting money; he has also voted across party lines in previous elections (Obasanjo, Jonathan, Sowore). Those facts do not erase the visible reversal on Obi or the broader public scepticism that now attaches to his interventions.
In a country where many citizens already discount loud online voices as mercenary, each documented U-turn reduces residual credibility.
Nigeria is not short of people who organise protests, file suits, or issue statements. What it lacks is a reliable filter that distinguishes those who will still speak when the cheque is absent from those who recalibrate once the highest bidder is identified.
Adeyanju’s case is useful precisely because the record of earlier praise and later denunciation is public and searchable.
When words can be walked back so cleanly, the audience learns to treat the next statement as provisional—valid only until the next transaction.
That fatigue, more than any single lawsuit or social-media feud, is the practical consequence.
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