Success in Nigeria is often a pageant. It is staged, spotlighted, and amplified until it assumes the weight of inevitability. The script is familiar: ambition that borders on audacity, displays of luxury that feel like conquest, and an aura of invincibility. For a time, Sijibomi Ogundele, the magnetic founder of Sujimoto Group, played this script to perfection. His towering structures in Ikoyi, his flair for flamboyance, and his rhetoric of excellence made him appear as one of the new titans of Nigerian wealth.
But every pageant has its shadows. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s recent declaration that Ogundele is wanted for alleged fraud, money laundering, and diversion of public funds has stripped the gloss from that performance. Suddenly, a man once celebrated as a pioneer of “luxury redefined” is recast as a fugitive. This is no ordinary scandal. It is a parable, a warning about how fragile reputations can be when built on a shaky foundation of trust.
The facts, at least as laid out by the Enugu State Government, are sobering. In 2023, Ogundele’s firm won an N11.4bn contract to construct 22 “Smart Green Schools” across the state. To accelerate delivery, the government paid Sujimoto N5.7bn upfront, half the contract sum. The expectation was simple: build schools and build them well.
But according to the government, what followed was a descent into neglect. Inspections revealed “minimal to no significant work” on the sites more than a year later. Officials alleged that shoddy contractors, unqualified workers, and dubious practices were deployed. The Commissioner for Information, Dr Malachy Agbo, called it a “premeditated fraud”. The EFCC, having corroborated these claims, declared Ogundele wanted.
The symbolism is almost unbearable. On one side of Lagos, high-rise monuments to excess. On the soil of Enugu, the ghostly outlines of schools that never rose, foundations abandoned, children left in limbo. What does it say about us as a people that billions can be paid in advance for classrooms that never materialise? That a contract meant to plant seeds of knowledge has instead yielded disillusionment? Over 10 million Nigerian children are already out of school; each abandoned foundation adds to that staggering deficit.
The Nigerian public has responded with rage, but also with a certain weary familiarity. Betrayal, after all, is an old song in our national choir.
In the wake of the scandal, defenders of Ogundele have offered alternative narratives. In a viral video, he denied the allegations, insisting he was not a thief but a victim of inflation and project delays. Some sympathetic commentators went further, comparing his case to that of Damola Adamolekun, the Nigerian who once led Red Lobster in the U.S. after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The comparison is not only misleading but also intellectually dishonest. Adamolekun inherited a bankruptcy; Ogundele is accused of orchestrating a financial mirage. One is an issue of corporate turnaround under court supervision; the other is an allegation of diverting billions in public funds entrusted to schools. To collapse the two into the same basket is to flatten integrity into mere circumstance. It is akin to saying that the man who misplaces his wallet in the market and the one who picks another man’s pocket are guilty of the same misfortune.
Integrity is not a matter of convenience. It is, as Chinua Achebe once wrote in The Trouble with Nigeria, “The linchpin of development.” Without it, neither institutions nor individuals can prosper sustainably.
Consider the story of Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, one of the country’s most enduring construction firms. Decades ago, when the company was contracted to build parts of the Abuja infrastructure, inflation and political turmoil threatened timelines. Yet, instead of abandoning projects or diverting funds, the company leveraged loans and international guarantees to deliver. Whatever criticisms one may level at multinationals, the fact remains: delivery sustained their reputation. Contracts begot contracts, and Julius Berger remains synonymous with construction credibility.
This is not to say the firm is flawless. But the contrast is instructive. Where others cut corners, they delivered, and by doing so, they preserved integrity as a business asset. In Nigeria’s volatile business environment, where contracts are risky and payments uncertain, shortcuts are seductive. But shortcuts are also snares. When greed guides, disaster follows. As one World Bank paper on governance once noted, “In societies where contracts are not honoured, capital flees not just across borders but away from the future.” A nation cannot advance if its builders choose deception over delivery.
The debate did not end with Ogundele’s video. Stephen Akintayo, another real estate player, waded in, lamenting that Nigerians were being too hard on Sujimoto. He likened the matter to a $50m business loss, suggesting this was nothing more than the usual turbulence of entrepreneurship.
That such a defence came from Akintayo is telling. He has himself been dogged by fraud allegations, with victims alleging property scams and unfulfilled land sales. His intervention reads less like solidarity among entrepreneurs than a pact among embattled reputations. The deeper tragedy, however, was the applause he received. Many Nigerians in the comments nodded along, dismissing fraud allegations as mere business “challenges”. This casual acceptance of ethical erosion is perhaps the greater crisis.
It recalls Wole Soyinka’s warning in The Open Sore of a Continent: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” Silence, in this case, is not just muteness; it is the willingness to rationalise fraud when it comes from one’s tribe, one’s religion, or one’s class. It is complicated by applause.
Sadly, beyond Ogundele, beyond Akintayo, lies the real indictment: Nigeria’s contracting system. Why was half the contract sum paid upfront without stronger guarantees? Why award a critical educational project to a firm whose expertise lies in luxury towers, not schools? Why the lax oversight, such that a year could pass before “minimal to no work” became obvious? These are not just legal questions. They are governance questions. In societies where institutions work, parliaments demand answers, auditors’ general resign, and ministers face inquiries. In Nigeria, however, the cycle repeats: scandal, outrage, silence, and then business as usual.
In contract law, there is an old Latin maxim: pacta sunt servanda, agreements must be kept. It is the bedrock of trust in any society. Exceptions exist, yes, such as rebus sic stantibus when unforeseen circumstances alter contracts. But those are exceptions, not escape routes for fraud. To play ludo with public funds under the guise of “business challenges” is to vandalise this sacred principle. It corrodes the very soil on which commerce stands. And when commerce crumbles, so does the republic.
The Sujimoto saga is not merely about one businessman. It is about the values we choose to uphold as a people. Will we excuse deceit because the accused once dazzled us with marble floors and champagne towers? Will we normalise fraud so long as the accused speaks our language or shares our faith? Or will we insist, however imperfectly, that integrity is non-negotiable?
Because nations, like individuals, are built not just on ambition but on character. And without character, the towers we build will always be hollow, destined to fall at the first tremor of scrutiny.
The collapse of Sujimoto’s myth is not just his personal tragedy; it is a mirror held up to Nigeria. In it, we see our institutions’ weakness, our citizens’ moral fatigue, and our dangerous tendency to romanticise fraud when it comes with a familiar accent. But the mirror also reflects possibility. If we choose integrity, not as rhetoric but as practice, then we may yet build a nation where contracts mean something, where public trust is not for sale, where the word “builder” is not synonymous with betrayal.
For now, the ruins of Sujimoto’s myth rise as a warning: a monument not of marble, but of sand. A nation that ranks 140th out of 180 in Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index cannot afford to build on such shifting sands.
