Five Transfers, One Phantom Council: The PFIPC Money Trail
Five bank transfers spread across ten weeks of 2025 have become the clearest window yet into how a body the Federal Government says never legally existed managed to move money, occupy federal offices and slip into Nigeria’s national budget.
The House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee investigating the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council announced on Tuesday that it would question the purported Director General of the council, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, at an undisclosed date and location, rather than in open session, because he remains in police custody under a subsisting court order.
The committee, chaired by Hon. Yusuf Gagdi (APC, Plateau), is examining allegations of forgery, impersonation, financial impropriety and abuse of public institutions surrounding the PFIPC and its self styled chief executive. Gagdi told the hearing that lawmakers had not declined to summon Adeyemi. “For the benefit of the general public, we are not refusing to invite Prince Adeniyi here. We have pronounced him to appear here and police have responded that he is in their custody based on the court order,” he said.
He framed the decision as a question of constitutional limits. “As an arm of government, we respect the principle of federalism and separation of powers. We respect the powers of the judiciary and the executive, and we equally limit ourselves within our own powers,” Gagdi said. “We do not have the power as the National Assembly to vacate an existing court order and say that somebody who is in the custody of the Nigerian Police should leave the police to appear before the National Assembly.”
The chairman said the private session was also intended to avoid disturbing parallel investigations. “We will not announce to the general public when we will interact with Prince Adeniyi. We will not, because the ICPC are investigating this matter. EFCC are investigating this matter. Part of this matter is before the court of law and many other agencies,” he said, adding that the encounter would be recorded, held in the presence of Adeyemi’s lawyers, and preceded by formal notice to the police. “Whether he appears before this committee or this committee appears before him, the most important thing is to have an interaction with him to get some things clarified. And we are going to do just that.”
Earlier at the same sitting, the Managing Director of Divine Dopacy Nigeria Limited, Mr. Gbenga Collins, gave the committee the most detailed account so far of what an ordinary contractor lost to the arrangement. Collins told lawmakers he paid N400 million to Adeyemi after being promised a contract to renovate and furnish what was presented to him as the official residence of the council’s chief executive.
According to his testimony, the payments were made in five tranches between May and July 2025. N100 million was paid on 16 May 2025 into an account held by World Entrepreneurs Limited at Guaranty Trust Bank, followed by another N100 million on 22 May and a further N100 million on 28 May. A fourth payment of N80 million followed on 20 June, taking the total into that single account to N380 million. The balance of N20 million was paid on 29 July 2025 into an Access Bank account belonging to Sunshine Confectionery and Catering Services.
Collins, whose firm operates in agribusiness, said he first met Adeyemi in December 2024 at a programme in their hometown, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, and was invited to Abuja in January or February 2025. “When I arrived at the airport, he sent an official car to come and pick me from the airport to his office at the Federal Secretariat, Abuja,” he told the panel, describing a Lexus sport utility vehicle bearing federal government registration plates. “I saw police officers with him.”
He said a contract award letter, scope of work and a signed agreement were handed to him in April 2025. “I had to pay N400 million for the facilitation of that project to show my strength that I would be able to handle the project. At the same time, he said it would fast track the mobilisation for the contract,” Collins said. Asked directly by Gagdi whether the payment amounted to a bribe, he rejected that characterisation, though he conceded under questioning that no public procurement process was followed. He also said he did not convert any part of the sum into United States dollars.
Mobilisation, he said, never came. “When I finished the payment, he said they were going to do the mobilisation by August,” he told lawmakers, adding that the promise later shifted to November before calls went unanswered. “My lawyer was the first person who told me that I had been scammed.” His counsel petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on 13 November 2025, and he adopted the petition six days later. “I have started selling my property. My business is not going well again,” he said.
The testimony prompted the committee to summon the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps to appear on Thursday to explain how vehicles linked to the council obtained federal government number plates.
The paper trail runs deeper than one contract. The committee has said it uncovered about 29 documents suspected to be forged. “So, it is not only a letter that was suspected to be forged? We are dealing with documents that include what is said to be a forged Act of the National Assembly in an attempt to establish a fake agency,” Gagdi told an earlier sitting.
The Accountant General of the Federation, Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, told the panel his office’s first contact with the body came through a letter dated 7 November 2024 bearing a State House reference number, requesting an administrative code for what was then presented as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council. Ogunjimi said the code was created following standard procedure, but that investigators later established the correspondence had not originated from the Presidency. He said a request to open a Treasury Single Account was declined for failing statutory requirements, while two domiciliary accounts approved at the Central Bank of Nigeria for inflows never became operational. Self accounting status, he said, was granted for an initial six months, and a request for an establishment grant of N27.4 billion was never approved. “It is important to note that no funds were released under salaries, overhead, capital, or any form of intervention or special allocation to the council,” he told lawmakers.
The Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, made a similar point about the N1.32 billion carried for the council in the 2026 Appropriation Act, a figure also rendered as N1.302 billion in some official records. He said the N200 million overhead and N300 million capital components were never touched. “No procurement reached the point at which expenditure would arise. No Ministerial Tenders Board approved a transaction. No Certificate of No Objection was issued. No treasury warrant followed. No treasury cash backing followed,” he said. “The Budget Office did not create the council.”
The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Didi Walson Jack, and the Director of Banking Services at the CBN, Abdullahi Hamisu, have also appeared before the panel. The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Dunoma Umar Ahmed, told the committee the ministry alerted the Office of the National Security Adviser after spotting discrepancies in documents submitted by the council, disclosing that Adeyemi approached the ministry on 26 June 2025, 5 August 2025 and 5 June 2026 seeking endorsement for a proposed World Investment Summit.
Adeyemi’s legal team, now led by Festus Akhigbe after Femi Falana reportedly withdrew from the defence, has pushed back on the narrative that one man built the council alone. In a statement issued on Sunday, the team said their client was being cast as an “isolated, master mind impostor who single handedly fabricated a federal government agency” and was “being made a scapegoat to cover up deep seated institutional lapses, procedural breakdowns, and internal approvals within the government structure”.
The lawyers listed what they described as undisputed institutional actions, saying the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation “formally acknowledged documentation and facilitated official office allocations within the Federal Secretariat Complex”, that the Office of the Accountant General and the CBN issued administrative budget codes and granted self accounting status, and that the Office of the Head of the Civil Service “formally approved the establishment structure and granted recruitment waivers that enabled the onboarding of three hundred and fourteen (314) personnel”. They asked: “If these documents were crude forgeries, how did the central administrative engine of the Federal Government act upon them?”
The statement added that any legislative report produced without his testimony would be “fundamentally flawed”.
Set against that, a police interim investigation report indicates the inquiry began after the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President petitioned the Inspector General of Police on 17 October 2025 over forged appointment letters. Financial checks conducted with the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit reportedly traced 34 bank accounts to the suspect across several commercial banks, nine of them opened in the names of entities presented as government agencies. Three officials posted to the PFIPC office in August 2025 told investigators they performed no official duties there. Police have filed an eight count charge before the Federal High Court, according to evidence given to the committee by Assistant Commissioner of Police Bashir Abdullahi.
Investigators say Adeyemi named Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola as the person who helped him obtain the disputed appointment letter. Tanimola died in a fire at Kachi Hotel, Utako, Abuja, on 22 October 2025, five days before Adeyemi’s arrest, with police saying the circumstances were corroborated through the deceased’s sister, the hotel proprietor, National Hospital Abuja and St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, Maitama.
That account has not settled the matter publicly. Senior Advocate of Nigeria Femi Falana, in a statement titled “These Deaths Must Not Be Swept Under the Carpet”, urged the Inspector General of Police to take over the investigation, noting the subsequent demolition of the hotel. “Whoever authorised the demolition of the hotel must have set out to cover up the alleged fire incident,” he said. Former APC Deputy National Publicity Secretary Timi Frank has separately called for a forensic inquiry.
The Presidency distanced itself from the council in June 2026, stating that it was never created by any law, executive order or presidential instrument. On 2 July 2026, President Bola Tinubu directed the ICPC to conduct a thorough investigation and report within 30 days, according to a statement by presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, who had a day earlier described Adeyemi as a “con artist”. The House resolved on 8 July 2026 to trace how the allocation entered the budget and constituted the ad hoc committee.
Adeyemi has alleged that N400 million was delivered by proxy to the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, with a further N200 million demanded. The Presidency has denied any link, citing police forensic analysis which it says established that the signature on the appointment letter was forged. The ICPC confirmed that Gbajabiamila attended its Abuja headquarters on Monday, 20 July 2026 to give a statement, saying he “spent some time attending to enquiries from investigators, after which he departed the premises”. His counsel, Jiti Ogunye, said his client “gave his testimony, responded to questions accordingly, and has returned to his duty post”. Reports of the exact date of Adeyemi’s rearrest in Osun State, following a Federal High Court order over his failure to honour a summons, have varied across published accounts.
Nigeria’s public finance system has repeatedly proved vulnerable to fictitious entries. The Federal Ministry of Finance announced in early 2016 that 23,846 non existent workers had been removed from the payroll, cutting the February 2016 salary bill by N2.293 billion against December 2015 levels. By mid 2016, the EFCC put the cumulative figure at 37,395 ghost workers. What distinguishes the PFIPC case is scale of a different kind: not phantom names on a payroll, but a phantom institution that reportedly occupied space in the Federal Secretariat for about two years, obtained an administrative code, and appeared as a line item in an Appropriation Act passed by both chambers and signed into law.
Gagdi said the committee would continue its public hearing on Thursday, conclude outstanding engagements within the week, and lay its final report before the House when lawmakers resume. Indications from the panel are that it will conclude without hearing publicly from either Gbajabiamila or Adeyemi, while continuing to liaise with the ICPC, the police, the EFCC, the Department of State Services and the Office of the National Security Adviser. Whether the eventual report closes the gap between institutional denial and the documentary trail may prove the real test of the exercise.