•Adeniyi Adeyemi
In every pre-election year, it is usually hard to separate truth from fallacy or even the grotesque from the downright odd. The Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) saga has left President Bola Ahmed Tinubu battling to unravel a sleazy affair that has touched on the core of his administration, reports Saturday Guardian.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s decision to direct the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related matters Commission (ICPC) to investigate the alleged flotation of an irregular agency of the Federal Government came as a surprise to many Nigerians.
Before the president acted, many Nigerians had taken up verbal stones, which they hauled in the direction of the Presidency, listing the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) as another evidence of lack of accountability and rigour by the administration.
However, the inroad made by the sponsors and promoters of the PFIPC within the federal government circles made it quite hard for many citizens to believe that it was not a case of botched insider-sleaze tunnel.
The allegation by the phoney Director General of the PFIPC, Adeyemi Matthew that he funneled N400 million through a middle-man to the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, gave the critics the fuel to hold onto their belief that the business blew open due to the DG’s refusal to pass on additional N200 million to the CoS.
But the CoS’s decision to sue Adeyemi as well as the fact of his earlier petition to the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) brought about a new dimension to the entire saga. The gap between those who believed that the CoS was actually involved in the setting up of the PFIPC and those who gave him a large dose of the benefit of the doubt widened.
The rambunctious Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, told Nigerians in his monthly media chat that having known Gbajabiamila for more than 20 years, it was impossible that the President’s Chief of Staff should condescend to such antics. He declared that the creation of PFIPC was the handiwork of political detractors and rivals who wanted to make President Tinubu look bad in the eyes of the people.
Yet, others argued that it was not possible for an outsider to summon the courage to wake up a comatose federal agency, rename and factor it into the official stream and governance scheme of the current federal government.
Ligaments Of Bureaucracy
In a letter dated November 21, 2024, the Permanent Secretary, General Services office within the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Nnamdi Mbaeri, endorsed a letter through which the PFIPC was allocated an office in the Federal Secretariat.
It was gathered that the letter also mandated the EFCC to grant the PFIPC access to one of the facilities recovered by the anti-graft agency for use as its office. Nothing was said about who scheduled the memorandum that prompted Mbaeri to raise the memo for office accommodation for PFIPC.
Intriguingly, Mbaeri, who should have thrown more light on the sequences of correspondence that culminated in the demand for an operational facility for PFIPC to occupy, retired from the federal civil service in July 2025.
Also, on account of the civil service rule, which dictates that civil servants can only be seen, but not heard, the officer who took over from Mbaeri, Danjuma Mohammed, can only speak to the police in the course of their investigation.
But between October 2025 when the Gbajabiamila petitioned the Inspector General Police (IGP) and the DSS to investigate the PFIPC and November 5 when he formally asked the OSGF to disclaim Adeyemi and the PFIPC, no individual or institution had an inkling that the PFIPC was a cloned agency.
That very fact speaks volumes about the gray lines that existed as the bureaucratic ligaments that conferred authenticity to PFIPC. It was based on this that many critics are calling for Gbajabiamila’s suspension.
Were there trails that Gbajabiamila saw that none of the other offices, particularly the OSGF could not and did not see? Did the OSGF, the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigeria Police, sleep on the Chief of Staff’s petitions and whistle blowing until the mid-2026, when it became a media blow out?
Although the development struck the presidency with surprise and disbelief, some Nigerians thought that President Tinubu was adopting the silent code to douse public angst.
But instead of invoking Omerta, the code of silence that governs fraternities and corruption cartels as suggested, the president turned a new chapter by directing the ICPC to probe the various sides and shades of the saga.
Many recalled how the Chief of Staff disclosed barely two months ago how the president would have given him the booth for the political miscalculations of his (Gbajabiamila’s) political godson, Desmond Elliot, during the ill-fated attempt to dislodge the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa.
What that recollection did was to convince Nigerians that contrary to beliefs that President Tinubu would go to any length to shield his beloved political ally and loyal staff, it was possible for the president to fire whoever crosses the red line, particularly those that would give a negative public image to his administration.
As it turned out, by giving the ICPC 30 days to turn in its report, the president wants to toe the path of administrative inquisition to unearth whatever dead bones that were buried in the PFIPC cubicle.
In a statement, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, explained that the presidential directive “follows the discovery of fictitious PFIPC, which was never established by the Federal Government of Nigeria and (therefore) has no basis in any law, presidential instrument, executive approval or other lawful act of government.”
The statement asserted that one Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew presented himself as the Director-General of the so-called PFIPC and falsely claimed to be a presidential appointee, noting that the issues to be investigated by ICPC include: “The forged appointment letters and other official government documents, the use of a false claim of presidential appointment to seek or obtain official recognition and diplomatic support, including visa facilitation and the opening of multiple bank accounts in the names of purported government agencies using allegedly forged documents.”
The ICPC was also charged to go after other collaborators involved as well as “the wider circumstances that may have enabled a fictitious body and a false claim of presidential appointment to acquire an appearance of official legitimacy.”
By requiring that the ICPC should identify any weaknesses in government and institutional procedures that may have been exploited and to recommend immediate measures to prevent the recurrence of similar abuses, the President showed that the saga touched on the core of his administration.
Despite the president’s charge to the ICPC, critics remained unrelenting. Senior lawyer, Femi Falana, dismissed the presidential position as a ruse, demanding that the Chief of Staff should be temporarily moved away from his office for a pure investigation by non-appointees of the president.
“Allegations involving public officials should never be settled through media exchanges or official denials alone. They must be subjected to lawful, independent investigation where evidence, not emotion, determines the outcome,” Falana asserted.
But the president appears more disposed to upholding the legal maxim that an accused person remains innocent until proven otherwise, hence he did not hesitate to saddle the Chief of Staff with the additional responsibility of chairing the Presidential Committee on the Implementation of State Police.
The president stated that while the chief of staff will serve as Committee Chairman, the Attorney General of the Federation, Prince Lateef Fagbemi; the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu and the IGP, Tunde Disu are among the members.
Tijjani Sarki, a good governance advocate based in Kano State, reacted to the appointment on his Facebook page, where he formulated some five questions for the president to resolve.
Sarki stated that if the Presidency maintains that the PFIPC never legally existed, it should explain how it obtained an approved establishment within the Federal Civil Service.
“Under what legal authority was a recruitment waiver reportedly issued during a government embargo on employment? Which public institutions processed, endorsed or supervised these approvals, and were established procedures followed?
“If the documents published in the media are inaccurate or fabricated, who created them, and why has no comprehensive forensic investigation been publicly announced? Finally, if the documents are authentic, what measures will the federal government take to reassure Nigerians that the integrity of public administration and the budgetary process remains intact?”
Coming in a pre-election year, it is obvious that the mix of political and administrative considerations compound the legal underpinnings of the search for the real clues to the PFIPC monster.
As a political strategist, President Tinubu may never allow an independent panel to probe the quagmire because not only will that arm opposition with the arsenal to repudiate his Renewed Hope Agenda, but also distract his electioneering messaging.
With Adeyemi facing an eight-count criminal trial at a Federal High Court, Abuja, the Presidency has got a valid respite that it would naturally tell naysayers that it cannot interfere with judicial process, but allow the law to take its course.
