This Fake Non-existent Federal Agency situation is quite concerning

[Dr Abasi Kufre]

Alleged Fake Non-existent Agency

This situation is quite concerning.

Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to the President, claims that the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) does not exist within the structure of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.

However, this very council is listed in the budget of the Presidency, not in some distant ministry or agency; it's allocated within the budget of the Presidency itself.

This raises two possibilities: either the Presidency is unaware of its own budget, which is meant for its own operations, or the Secretary to the Federal Government is being dishonest.

What surprises me is that the Secretary is making a definitive statement on an issue that can be easily verified. I've attached a screenshot from the Federal Budget Office, which shows what the National Assembly voted on and what the President approved.

The amount in question is N1.3 billion.

We will be closely observing how the President responds to this situation.

 

[Gloria Nnabuo]

The State House Statement: An Unquantifiable Reputational Damage to the Nigerian Financial Sector.

I do not think that most Nigerians ever thought this country would get to this primitive nadir of rent seeking extraction from our collective patrimony.

But here we are, and it is quite interesting that the community of virtue signalers have been eerily quiet, some of them trying so hard to distract our attention by pushing up petty diversionary narratives, just to bury this scandalous development as quickly as possible.

Unpacking the contents of the Press Release from the State House over this Adeyemigate would take an entire week because by a single stroke of the brush, it raises questions and issues that have the capacity to tarnish various areas of our national life.

Is it making a whole mess of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the entire diplomatic community, or the institutional damage to organizations such as the EFCC, the National Assembly, the Budget Office, the Accountant General of the Federation, the National Executive Council, or even ridiculing other agencies such as the Federal Head of Service throwing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs it touched virtually every sector of our national life.

It is the single most “demarketingly” damaging piece of statement anybody has ever written from such a supposedly lofty height of authority in the history of Nigeria. But if you do not understand the extent that statement is destructive, just do not bother yourself. We must not know everything. Allow things that are higher than your thinking to remain at that height in peace.

My focus today is on the Nigerian financial sector.

Just imagine that you are a foreign investor, or just an investor or business person who is serious about issues such as financial regulation.

And you read the statement from the country’s highest authority claiming that a fake nonexistent agency was able to successfully open 34 other bank accounts in a system that the nation’s financial regulators have been projecting as one of the most strictly regulated in the world.

That claim strikes at the very heart of the credibility of our banking industry, and the institutional integrity of the regulators of the financial system.

And this claim questions the integrity and credibility of institutions such as the apex regulator which is the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), the National Pension Commission (PENCOM) the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Financial Services Regulation Coordinating Committee (FSRCC).

But worse still is the claim that this nonexistent agency was able to open a bank account with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Aside from Ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) that manage national funds through the CBN, commercial and merchant banks which maintain reserve and settlement accounts with the CBN, discount houses and financial intermediaries that are licensed dealers that trade in short-term government securities, no other organization or individual can open an account with the apex bank.

That a fake nonexistent agency was able to open an account with the central bank portends a huge reputational damage to the entire financial system in Nigeria.

As the central bank is the ultimate guardian of Nigeria's financial system, a supposed breach of this magnitude creates a perception of profound institutional failure in its gatekeeping role.

It can lead to a "once bitten, twice shy" response from international partners, as the CBN has been forced to issue public disclaimers against fraud for decades. This incident inevitably dents the CBN's carefully cultivated image of being a competent and secure regulator.

Moreso, it paints the central bank in a very bad light because if such a regulatory institution failed to checkmate a fake agency and allowed a nonexistent agency to open an account not only within its own banking hall, but also open 34 accounts within the banking sector, then it has failed in Pillar 2 (supervisory review process) of the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision.

The Pillar 2 deals with the gatekeeping duties of a central bank such as failing to screen out bad actors, missing warning signs, or wrongly licensing unsafe banks.

The statement by the State House inadvertently undermines confidence in the entire regulatory framework. It suggests that Know Your Customer (KYC) and due diligence protocols are dangerously porous, enabling even state-level institutions to be compromised.

Such a failure is a national security issue, exposing the financial system to exploitation by fraudsters and money launderers.

Moreso, the claim that a fake agency could bypass KYC controls severely dents the credibility of the Nigerian banking sector's KYC framework.

It suggests systemic weaknesses that allow fraudulent entities to infiltrate the system, potentially facilitating money laundering and undermining the integrity of the entire financial architecture.

No serious government or even a society should allow such heavy allegations to either lie low, or die off without ensuring that it is duly and thoroughly investigated and those found wanting prosecuted.

Any country where such a major issue as this is allowed to die a natural death without consequences will neither be part of the march for human advancement nor fit to be admitted within the comity of nations.

The Central Bank of Nigeria must issue either a disclaimer or an explainer to extricate its name from this mess. if not, then Nigerians should not be held responsible for whatever meaning they read into this malfeasance.

 

[Peterson Adejo]

If Nigeria was a serious country, heads of agencies and powerful appointees and politicians would have resigned or get arrested because of this case.

Let me explain it for those who have not been following.

For months, a man named Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew allegedly operated a federal agency that does not exist. He called it the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council. No law created it. No gazette announced it. Yet this phantom agency had an office inside the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja, the very heart of Nigeria's civil service.

From that office, he allegedly held meetings with Nigerians and foreign nationals as a Director General appointed by the President. He convened a meeting with ambassadors at a hotel in Asokoro. He wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting a note verbale to the US Embassy to secure visas for his "staff." He walked through the corridors of power and the corridors opened for him.

Then it gets worse.

According to the Presidency's own statement, this man operated 34 bank accounts, nine of them opened in the names of fictitious government agencies. And the most damning of all: he allegedly opened an account with the Central Bank of Nigeria itself, by misleading the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation with forged documents. The apex bank. The ultimate gatekeeper of our financial system. The institution that lectures commercial banks on Know Your Customer protocols allegedly opened an account for an agency that does not exist.

But hold on. Here is the part that should point Nigerians to how deeply decayed the system has become. 

This "non-existent" agency is sitting inside the 2026 national budget. Pages 50 and 51 of the Appropriation Act. Over N1.3 billion allocated to it. Salaries. Allowances. Even N182 million budgeted for it to host a World Investment Summit. A budget that passed through the Budget Office. Through the Federal Executive Council. Through the National Assembly. Signed into law by the President himself.

Think about what that means. A federal budget does not write itself. Line items do not smuggle themselves onto pages 50 and 51 of an Appropriation Act. Somebody prepared that proposal. Somebody reviewed it. Somebody approved it. Somebody voted on it. Somebody signed it.

Let me be clear. We do not know the entire truth yet. The matter is in court, and the accused has made his own explosive allegations against the Chief if Staff to the President, allegations that remain unproven. But I am certain of one thing: if this case is truly what it appears to be, one man sitting in a borrowed office could not have pulled it off alone. A scheme of this scale, reaching into the Federal Secretariat, the Accountant General's office, the Central Bank, and the national budget itself, could not have been possible without the aiding and abetting of powerful government officials and heads of agencies. This so-called fake agency was not built for decoration. Everything about its design points to one purpose: positioning to extract public money. And the budget allocation is the smoking gun, because that is precisely how public money would have flowed to it, legally, quietly, with the full authority of the Nigerian state.

That is the real scandal. Not the impostor. The system that budgeted for him.

Now, why should this worry you?

Because if a phantom agency can enter a signed federal budget, then you no longer know what else is hiding in that budget. How many other line items are feeding entities that exist only on paper?

Because if forged letters can move the Accountant General's office to facilitate a CBN account, then every safeguard we boast about is a safeguard on paper.

Because every foreign investor reading this story is asking one question: if their central bank cannot detect a fake agency, what happens to my money in their commercial banks?

In serious countries, this kind of breach triggers resignations, independent panels, and prosecutions that climb upward, not just downward. In Nigeria, it triggers press statements defending the powerful and warnings to the public not to draw conclusions.

One man is standing trial. But the people who prepared, reviewed, approved, and signed a budget for a "non-existent" agency are not on trial. The network is not on trial. And until it is, nothing has been solved. It has only been postponed until the next phantom agency, and the next budget.

A country that punishes the small fraudster but shields the big enablers is not fighting corruption. It is managing it. It’s corporating with it. It’s enabling it.

If you ask me, Adeniyi is the smallest criminal in all of this. The people who established the phantom agency and placed him there are still the same people prosecuting the man.

-KAA
#kaa_truths

 

[Paul Adiku]

I INDEPENDENTLY SEARCHED NIGERIA'S BUDGET DOCUMENTS FROM 2019 TO THE PRESENT. HERE IS WHAT I FOUND ABOUT THE PFIPC SCANDAL THAT NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT.

THE NAME DID NOT COME FROM NOWHERE

Everyone is focused on Adeyemi the man. Nobody has gone back to ask where the name "Presidential Economic Advisory Council" actually came from. I did. And the answer changes this entire story.

The Presidential Economic Advisory Council is not a Tinubu creation. Tinubu's economic body is called the Presidential Economic Coordination Council. He established it in March 2024, inaugurated it in July 2024, and chairs it himself alongside Dangote, Elumelu, the Senate President and the Governors Forum Chairman. It has a different name, a different structure and a different budget code.

The Presidential Economic Advisory Council is a creation of Buhari. Buhari established it in September 2019 to replace the Economic Management Team that Osinbajo was heading. It had real named members. Prof. Doyin Salami as chairman. Charles Soludo. Bismark Rewane. Eight economists reporting directly to the President with a defined mandate and a legal institutional identity.

When Tinubu came in and created the PECC in 2024, the Buhari-era PEAC was never formally dissolved. No gazette removing it. No Budget Office circular revoking its institutional identity. It simply went dormant. But dormant in Nigeria's government system is not the same as deleted.

That dormant status is exactly what was exploited.

 

[Paul Adiku]

PART 2 — WHAT THE BUDGET DOCUMENTS ACTUALLY SHOW

I searched the 2024 Appropriation Act. The Presidential Economic Advisory Council does not appear. Budget code 0111062001 is not there.

I searched the 2025 Appropriation Act. The Presidential Economic Advisory Council does not appear. Budget code 0111062001 is not there either.

I checked the 2026 Appropriation Act, signed by President Tinubu on April 17, 2026. Budget code 0111062001 appears for the first time, on pages 50 and 51, listed as:

"Presidential Economic Advisory Council / Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council"

Total allocation: N1,302,978,784.

Personnel costs: N802,978,783, including N573 million in salaries. Overhead: N200,000,001. Capital: N300,000,000 under Research and Development.
The capital allocation is broken down into ten specific programme lines. N182.5 million for logistics for the World Investment Summit 2026. A Harvard Program on Negotiation. A Certified Investment Management Analyst course. A WTO trade negotiations course. Strategic investment management training. Negotiation and leadership courses.
This is not a vague placeholder. This is a detailed, populated budget submission with ten line items written in correct budget language by someone who knows how budget submissions are prepared.

This code was not carried forward by Buhari. It did not exist in 2024 or 2025. It was created fresh and inserted into the 2026 budget during the September to December 2025 preparation window. The same window in which Adeyemi was arrested in October 2025 and charged in November 2025.

*PART 3 — THE BORROWED NAME AND WHY IT WAS CHOSEN

This is the dot nobody has connected publicly.

Whoever inserted budget code 0111062001 did not invent the name "Presidential Economic Advisory Council" out of thin air. They borrowed it from a real Buhari-era body with an institutional history, former members, and a legitimate place in the record of government advisory structures. A budget reviewer seeing that name would not immediately flag it as suspicious. It sounds like something that exists. Because something by that name did exist. Under a previous president.

That is the specific function the Buhari-era PEAC served in this operation. Not as an active siphoning vehicle across multiple budget years. The evidence does not show that. What it shows is that its dormant name was used as camouflage for a fresh 2026 insertion. Familiar enough to pass review. Obscure enough that most reviewers would not immediately know whether it was still active under the current administration or not.

This is research, not forgery. Whoever did this knew enough about the history of Nigerian presidential advisory structures to identify a dormant body whose name could be reactivated without triggering immediate scrutiny. That knowledge does not exist in the general public. It exists within a specific group of people with institutional memory of how government advisory bodies are named, coded, and tracked within the Budget Office system.

And one more thing. The Presidency's July 1 statement called both the PEAC and the PFIPC fictitious entities. But the PEAC was not technically fictitious. Adding PFIPC made it so. It was a real body of the Buhari administration. The name was real. The history was real. The exploitation of that history is what is new.

*PART 4 — THE CIVIL SERVANTS AND THE OAGF TRAIL

Premium Times' reporting, based on court documents, adds the most specific layer to this story, and it needs to be read carefully.

In April 2025, Adeyemi wrote to the Accountant General of the Federation on PFIPC letterhead, requesting the deployment of staff to fill five vacancies, including a Principal Accountant, Accountant I, Principal Auditor, Senior Auditor, and Auditor I. He also wrote a separate letter requesting the transfer of two named staff from the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President.

The OAGF processed that request.

On August 28, 2025, three senior civil servants were officially posted to the PFIPC. Their names are in court documents. Ojo Victor, 55, Assistant Chief Accountant. Omeh Amarachukwu, 40, internal auditor. Wakili Saidu, 45, audit department. Their posting letter was published on the OAGF's own website.

They collected their letters and presented themselves to Adeyemi on September 1. He told them to resume on September 8. They did. They were shown to a shared open office. They were never given any assignments. Never given any documentation. Never briefed on any mandate.

Ojo Victor's statement to police: "I have not been documented, and no schedule has been given to me since my assumption, which I find very strange."

Wakili Saidu: "Since then, there has been no correspondence between me and the DG."

Omeh Amarachukwu: "I only go to work once a week, the reason being that we have nothing to do since we were posted there."

All three said independently that they had never heard of the agency before seeing their names in the posting letter. The OAGF processed a staff deployment request from a fake agency, published the posting letter on their own website, and sent three senior civil servants to sit in an empty office for weeks.

Nobody at the OAGF called the SGF's office to ask if this agency was real before processing that request.

PART 5 — THE FULL PICTURE AND THE QUESTIONS THAT REMAIN

Let us put the confirmed timeline together.

September 2019: Buhari creates the Presidential Economic Advisory Council with real members and a legal mandate.

March 2024: Tinubu creates the Presidential Economic Coordination Council, effectively superseding the PEAC. The PEAC is never formally dissolved.

April 2025: Adeyemi writes to the OAGF on PFIPC letterhead requesting civil servant deployments. The OAGF processes the request.

May 2025: Adeyemi meets Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu at the National Assembly. Voice of Nigeria, Vanguard and Punch cover it as a legitimate government engagement.

June 2025: Adeyemi receives a Chinese investment delegation and announces a Nigeria-China bilateral investment platform.

August 28, 2025: Three OAGF civil servants are officially posted to the PFIPC. Their posting letter appears on the OAGF website.

September 2025: Adeyemi visits EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede. A joint statement is issued. He also briefs NERC on the World Investment Summit.

September to December 2025: During the same budget preparation window, budget code 0111062001, titled Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, is included in the 2026 executive budget bill, with an allocation of N1.3 billion and ten specific programme lines.

October 10, 2025: Adeyemi hosts foreign ambassadors at Wells Carlton Hotel, Asokoro, without the Foreign Affairs Ministry's knowledge.

October 17, 2025: Chief of Staff petitions DSS and Police.

October 22, 2025: Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola, the man Adeyemi says helped him procure the forged appointment letter, dies in a fire at Kachi Hotel in Utako. There is no independent news report of this fire. The only place it exists in the public record is inside the Presidency's statement.

October 27, 2025: Adeyemi is arrested.

November 27, 2025: Eight-count charge filed at the Federal High Court. Two co-defendants identified only as Femi and Anu remain at large.

December 19, 2025: President Tinubu presents the 2026 Appropriation Bill to NASS. Budget code 0111062001 is already inside it.

April 17, 2026: President Tinubu signs the 2026 Appropriation Act into law. Budget code 0111062001 with N1.3 billion survives every review stage.

The questions that remain unanswered.

Who specifically submitted the budget proposal for code 0111062001 and through which MDA desk? Who at the OAGF approved the staff deployment request without verifying the agency's legal existence? Who at the Federal Secretariat allocated office space without cross-checking the SGF's register. Who at NITDA issued a .gov.ng domain to an unregistered agency. What the GIFMIS expenditure records show for code 0111062001 in 2026. Who Femi and Anu are and why their full names have not been published despite being co-defendants in an active federal case.

Adeyemi goes to court on July 27. That court process needs to answer all of the above, not just the eight counts against one man.

The borrowed name of a dormant Buhari-era body. A brand-new budget code created during the same months as the suspect's prosecution. A key witness dead in a fire with no press coverage. Three civil servants sitting in an empty
office. A .gov.ng domain nobody has explained. And a N1.3 billion budget line in a signed presidential document.

This is not the profile of a lone con artist with a forged letter.

ASIWAJU BABA THESE ARE THE INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST REPORT SIR....

 

[Victor Linda]

ON GBAJA VS ADEYEMI - Honorable Gbaja is someone I admire from afar and this issue did throw me back.

Lately I rarely comment on politics and their antics, well unless it's kulikuli politics.

But on this issue, I think it's important I make a few points.

The truth is, we Nigerians are interesting people. Sometimes, we seem to have very short memories.

Can't we all see the facts?

On this Gbaja and Adeyemi issue, the facts are right in front of us.

We can tell where the truth lies.

So, I decided to take my time to study the very matter closely... and I discovered that Nigeria's Real Estate market is estimated at over $2.6trillion, according to BusinessDay.

That's approximately ₦3.56 quadrillion.

Now just for you to know how humongous that is...for context, if you divide ₦3.56 quadrillion by over 200 million Nigerians, each person would theoretically go home with about ₦17.8 million.

₦17.8 million box. Literally.

That should tell you just how massive this market is.

And guess what?

Lagos alone contributes about 37% of that ₦3.56 quadrillion market.

For the life of me, I honestly don't understand why anyone who desires financial growth wouldn't want a stake in this economy.

Anyway...

I'm embarking on a new adventure into one of the largest wealth-creating sectors ik Nigeria. Real Estate market.

If you'd like to join me on this Real Estate Adventure, learning, growing, investing, and building wealth for the next generation, check the comment section or send me a DM.

Let's build together.

Oh... you actually thought I was going to spend my time arguing over the Gbaja and Adeyemi matter when there's a multi-trillion-dollar real estate economy waiting to be explored?

Naaaa...

Gbaja and Adeyemi will be alright.

Politicians will be politicians.

As for me, I'd rather spend my energy building wealth than debating people who already have theirs.

We'll see on the Wealthy side.

Daniel ADENIYI
#thedanieladeniyi

 

[Olufemi Lawrence]

"He opened an account with CBN"...days after, "No account was opened with CBN".. same people, the claimers are now disclaimers.

 

[Olufemi Lawrence]

"He opened an account with CBN"...days after, "No account was opened with CBN".. same people, the claimers are now disclaimers.

I knew it would get to this level because I had this hunch that they hurriedly churned out that press release without thinking things through.

After some of us raised issues with the likely negative impacts on the banking industry and financial sector particularly especially the Central Bank's regulatory and supervisory authority.

They went back and started thinking.

How can they come back to start disclaiming a so called report they made available through a press release which they said was from an investigation they claimed involved Police, DSS etc etc?

Which other claims of that State House Press Release are they now withdrawing?

Let them tell us o. We heard nothing, read nothing, said nothing.

If they now claim that no account was opened with the CBN what of the claim that the Accountant General was deceived via forged documents?

Is that also being withdrawn?

What of 34 bank accounts?

What of the 300+ staff

What of the Office at the Federal Secretariat

What of Budget Office recognition

What of NASS(Senate & HoR)recognition

What of the hosting Foreign investors?

Which should we disbelieve as never happened because we didn't make up any of the claims.

The State House Press Release did so whichever they want us to remove we would respect their judgement.

A man was arrested on 27th October.

Charged a month later on 27th November.

Forgotten for 7 months.

Now going to court on the 27th of July.

27th day of the 7th month.