By Tunde Rahman
When Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew walked into Phase III Section of the Federal Secretariat in Abuja with a forged letter and emerged with an office, signage, and a semblance of government legitimacy, he did not act alone.
That is the uncomfortable truth of the “Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council” saga. Adeyemi has been charged with eight counts of fraud and forgery. But the bigger scandal is not one man’s alleged audacity. It is how a non-existent agency got close to N1.3bn in the 2026 budget, secured office space in the heart of government, hosted top government functionaries from Nigeria and abroad, and allegedly operated multiple accounts.
This is not a story about Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila versus Prince Adeyemi. This is a story about systemic failure. And until the system is properly fixed, it is quite probable that the next Adeyemi is somewhere forging another letterhead.
There are several systemic breaches in the saga that public finance analysts and other commentators have already pointed out, but they nonetheless require restating. There is a failure of due diligence in budgeting. The 2026 Appropriation Act contained N1.3bn for the “Presidential Economic Advisory Council/PFIPC”.
The problem, however, is that PFIPC has no legal backing and was never established by the Federal Government.
Top sources in the National Assembly claim the allocation entered “through a backdoor arrangement” without budget defence. For whatever his statement is worth, Adeyemi, in his interview with social media influencer, VeryDarkMan, from his hideout, said he was detained for 23 days while the budget was being prepared. “I did not prepare or defend any budget, and nobody went to defend it on my behalf,” he said. That means the appropriation to the fake agency bypassed the committees that should have asked probing questions such as: “Which agency is this?” What is its mandate? Who are its staff members?
Since the rebirth of democracy over 27 years ago, Nigeria’s budget process has been criticised for “insertions” and “undue inflation”. PFIPC is now the clearest example of why that matters. A ghost agency should not be able to get real money. If the Budget Office, House of Representatives, and Senate all missed this, our first line of fiscal defence needs a long, hard look.
There is also the issue of appointment and office verification. Adeyemi allegedly used a forged appointment letter bearing Gbajabiamila’s purported signature and counterfeit presidential letterhead to present himself as DG. Gbajabiamila’s lawyers insist he has “never had any contact whatsoever with Adeyemi”. Yet somehow, that letter was “accepted at the civil service headquarters without adequate verification”. It secured him an office in the Federal Secretariat for over a year. Up until this month, a sign for PFIPC was still up, directing visitors to the “council’s purported office” inside the Ministry of Health wing.
Just think about that. The administrative hub of the Federal Civil Service could not detect a fake appointment. If letterheads and signatures of top government functionaries are that easy to forge and accept, then no MDA is safe. Tomorrow, it could be a fake NCC or NDDC director. And next week, possibly a fake university VC.
The third system failure is about banking and due diligence. Adeyemi allegedly opened an account with the Central Bank of Nigeria for the non-existent agency. Adeyemi himself asked the most damning question in a viral video: “The same acclaimed non-existent agency has a domiciliary account, a pounds sterling account and a Treasury Single Account, all domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria. Is it even possible to open an account with fictitious documents in a commercial bank in Nigeria today, let alone at the CBN?
Rahman is a Senior Presidential Aide