by Mohammed Bello Doka
8 July, 2026.
The scandal of the so-called fake Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council has exposed the Tinubu administration as a government of institutional collapse, where fraudsters operate from the heart of the state and the man at the top claims ignorance of a budget he signed into law.
Let us begin with the facts. The Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC, was allocated the sum of N1,302,978,784 in the 2026 Appropriation Act. This is not a rumour or an opposition talking point. It is a documented fact, with N802,978,783 earmarked for personnel costs, N200,000,001 for overhead expenses, and N300 million for capital projects . The agency, according to public records, secured office space within the Federal Secretariat in Abuja. It operated bank accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria. It received approval for more than 300 personnel from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. It hosted foreign diplomats and conducted official business with federal institutions including security agencies .
Yet the Presidency now tells Nigerians that the PFIPC was never established by the federal government and had no basis under any law, presidential instrument, executive approval, or other lawful government authorization . They claim that one Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, a citizen, falsely presented himself as the Director-General of this purported council and claimed to be a presidential appointee .
Let us pause here. The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, has stated that he first raised the alarm on October 17, 2025, petitioning the DSS and Police about the fraudsters . Nearly nine months passed before the matter became public. If the Chief of Staff knew in October 2025 that a fake agency was operating, why did it remain in the budget that the President signed? Why did it continue to occupy official space and hold meetings with foreign diplomats for almost a year?
The government cannot have it both ways. If the PFIPC is genuinely a fake agency, then the budget that contained its allocation was signed into law by President Bola Tinubu himself. Who prepared the budget estimates for this non-existent agency? Which ministry submitted them to the National Assembly? Which officials defended the estimates before lawmakers? Who inserted the allocation into the Appropriation Bill? And who signed the final document into law if the agency was indeed fictitious ? The President's signature on the 2026 Appropriation Act is a matter of public record. If he signed a budget containing a fake agency, he either did so knowingly or he signed without reading what he was approving. Either scenario is a damning indictment of his competence.
The National Assembly has attempted to distance itself from the scandal, insisting that the budget line was neither created nor inserted by the legislature and that it is not the duty of lawmakers to carry out security checks on appointees heading government agencies . This is a convenient but dishonest position. The National Assembly has constitutional oversight responsibilities under sections 88 and 89 of the Nigerian Constitution. It is the duty of lawmakers to scrutinize the budget and ask questions about every allocation. The failure to detect a fake agency with a N1.3 billion allocation represents a monumental failure of legislative oversight . Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Speaker Tajudeen Abbas must explain to Nigerians how a fictitious agency received parliamentary approval .
The former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has rightly described the Presidency's response to the PFIPC controversy as a public confession of institutional collapse . He asked the critical questions that the government has refused to answer: if the agency was fictitious, who prepared the budget estimates, which ministry submitted them, which officials defended them before the National Assembly, who inserted the allocation, and who signed the budget into law ? These questions require clear and honest answers.
Now, consider the impossibility of an honest investigation by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, into this scandal. President Tinubu has ordered the ICPC to conduct a comprehensive investigation and submit a report within 30 days . But the ICPC is tasked with investigating a scheme that touched virtually every branch of the government. The Budget Office assigned the code. The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation processed requests for CBN accounts . The Ministry of Foreign Affairs engaged with the fake agency. The DSS and Police received a petition from the Chief of Staff in October 2025 and failed to act decisively for nine months. The National Assembly approved the budget. And the President signed it into law .
How can the ICPC conduct an impartial investigation when the entire chain of command from the President down is implicated? The Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, stands accused by the alleged DG of collecting N400 million to facilitate his appointment and later demanding 48 percent of the agency's N1.3 billion allocation . Gbajabiamila has denied these allegations and has demanded N10 billion in damages from Adeyemi . But the Chief of Staff remains in office, wielding immense power over the security agencies and the civil service that would be involved in any investigation. The PDP has rightly asked the President to suspend officials connected to the matter pending the outcome of the inquiry . The failure to do so confirms that the government is not serious about accountability.
The security agencies are also deeply compromised. The Chief of Staff petitioned the DSS and Police in October 2025 to investigate the fraudsters behind the fake agency . Yet the operation continued for almost another year. The DSS, EFCC, ICPC, and the Police all have leadership appointed by the President. They are all part of the same government structure that allowed this scandal to flourish. Asking them to investigate their own colleagues and superiors is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. The institutional and procedural weaknesses that enabled this fraud are the very weaknesses that the government has refused to address for years.
The PFIPC scandal is not merely an administrative lapse. It is a profound indictment of the Tinubu administration's competence and integrity. A government that cannot protect the integrity of its own budget cannot be trusted with the destiny of over 200 million Nigerians . The President has ordered Nigerians to bear the pain of fuel subsidy removal and currency devaluation in the name of economic reform. Yet while citizens endure hardship, billions of naira are being allocated to non-existent agencies through the very budget process that the President supervises.
If the PFIPC is truly a fake agency, then President Tinubu is the most clueless leader in the world. He presided over a government that created a budget line for an agency that did not exist. His Chief of Staff knew about the fraud in October 2025 and failed to stop it. His security agencies were asleep at the wheel. His National Assembly approved the budget without asking questions. And his signature is on the document that gave the fake agency official legitimacy. There is no escape from this conclusion. The man at the top is responsible for what happens under his watch.
Nigerians must demand answers. They must demand that the President step forward and explain how a fake agency got into his budget. They must demand that the Chief of Staff step aside while the investigation proceeds. They must demand that every public official involved in this scandal be held accountable, from the Budget Office to the National Assembly to the Presidency itself. The PFIPC scandal is a test of this government's commitment to transparency and accountability. It is a test that the Tinubu administration is failing spectacularly. The time for excuses is over. The time for accountability is now. If the PFIPC is fake, then Tinubu is the most clueless President in the world, and Nigerians deserve better.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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