Adeyemi, The N1.3bn Agency The Presidency Says Never Existed
Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew has spent the better part of two years moving through the corridors of official Abuja with the confidence of a man who belonged there. He held meetings inside the Federal Secretariat, received foreign delegations, exchanged handshakes with directors-general and lawmakers, and signed correspondence as the Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council. Today, the same man stands at the centre of one of the most curious controversies to touch the Tinubu presidency, accused of building an entire government agency that the Presidency insists never existed.
Adeyemi, who describes himself as a public administrator and investment promoter, is facing an eight-count charge before the Federal High Court in Abuja bordering on conspiracy, forgery, impersonation, false personation and obtaining by false pretence. Yet even with the charges hanging over him, he has refused to back down, maintaining that he is the legitimate head of a council he says was created to draw foreign investment into the country.
The dispute turns on a single question: does the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, also referenced in some documents as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council, actually exist as an arm of government?
Adeyemi says it does. He has told his story publicly, insisting the council had offices, staff, bank accounts and official approvals. In an earlier account he claimed to have paid ₦400 million to secure the appointment, a figure that would later balloon in his own telling of events.
The Presidency says none of it is real. In a statement issued through presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, the government described Adeyemi as an impostor and dismissed the council as a fictitious body. “The case of Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew is a clear case of a con artist who appears to have built a web of false claims to deceive unsuspecting government officials and the public,” Onanuga said, adding that Adeyemi “has a history of fraudulent misrepresentation.”
According to the Presidency, the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, never issued any appointment letter, and could not have, since the power to appoint into federal offices rests with the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Investigators allege that Adeyemi forged appointment letters bearing the name of President Bola Tinubu and the purported signature of Gbajabiamila, complete with falsified seals, reference numbers and official identifiers designed to make the documents appear genuine.
By the Presidency’s account, the first warning did not come from an outsider but from within. The Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission reportedly noticed an entity operating at cross-purposes with its own mandate, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised concerns after Adeyemi allegedly sought a note verbale to help process visa applications, including correspondence directed at the United States mission, for individuals linked to the purported agency.
Those concerns, the government says, prompted the Chief of Staff to petition the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force in October 2025, describing an elaborate forgery and impersonation scheme. Adeyemi was arrested on October 27, 2025, at his office within the Federal Secretariat Complex.
Police investigations, led by Assistant Commissioner of Police Kabir Mogaji, reportedly uncovered 34 bank accounts linked to Adeyemi, some allegedly opened in the names of non-existent government bodies. Investigators also alleged that he opened an account with the Central Bank of Nigeria by misleading the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation into treating the council as a legitimate institution. The police stated that no government money was transferred into the account.
On November 27, 2025, the Nigeria Police filed the eight-count charge, marked FHC/ABJ/CR/2025, against Adeyemi and two others identified only as Femi and Anu, both said to be at large. His next appearance has been scheduled for July 27, 2026.
If the agency was fictitious, one detail has proved difficult for the government to explain away. Reports showed that an entity variously listed as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council or Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Act, on pages that carried a provision of more than ₦1.3 billion.
Budget records put the breakdown at about ₦802.98 million for personnel costs, ₦200 million for overhead and ₦300 million for capital expenditure. The presence of that line item in a document that passes through the Budget Office, the Federal Executive Council, the National Assembly and finally presidential assent has fuelled uncomfortable questions. If the council was never created, critics have asked, how did it secure a place in the nation’s spending plan?
The Presidency has acknowledged the allocation while maintaining that the council was never lawfully established or recognised under the current administration. Opposition figures, lawyers and civil society groups have since called for a full investigation into how the entry survived the multiple layers of budgetary approval.
What began as a dispute over legitimacy has hardened into a direct confrontation between Adeyemi and the Chief of Staff. Adeyemi has alleged that the fallout stems from his refusal to meet financial demands, claiming that Gbajabiamila sought 48 per cent of a proposed take-off grant for the agency.
“The major rationale behind the disagreement between myself and the chief of staff is that he allegedly requested 48 per cent of the take-off grant (N27,395,510,136) from the same agency, which he denies, which I rejected after he collected a total sum of 400m by proxy, with a remaining balance of N200m to secure the said appointment,” Adeyemi said at a press conference.
The Chief of Staff has denied the allegations, and the Presidency has cautioned against attempts to politicise the matter or target Gbajabiamila, insisting that he was in fact the first to expose the scheme. Human rights lawyer Femi Falana has weighed in, arguing that the Presidency lacks the constitutional authority to exonerate any party and calling for an independent probe of both men. Falana is reported to be involved in Adeyemi’s defence.
Adeyemi has used every available platform to push back. Speaking on Thursday on Channels Television’s Politics Today, he rejected the label pinned on him by the government.
“I’m not a con artiste. Let the court decide on the matter,” he said.
He leaned heavily on the argument that his open dealings with senior officials proved his standing. “Let’s assume the agency does not exist. Would I have the temerity to be going all over the country meeting the heads of agencies and departments if they know that the agency does not exist or, as alleged, that I cooked everything?” he asked, pointing to his meetings with ambassadors and government functionaries.
Asked whether he was ready to stand trial, he answered, “Definitely,” adding that he wanted the courts to settle the matter one way or the other. “Since the matter is in the court, let the court of competent jurisdiction vindicate me because I’m ready to clear my name,” he said.
Adeyemi has acknowledged being a member of the All Progressives Congress in Oyo State but denied that his claimed appointment was a political reward.
The current storm is not the first time Adeyemi’s claims have drawn national attention. In 2016, he was widely reported to have emerged as President-General of the World Youth Organisation, which he presented as affiliated with the United Nations. The world body reportedly denied any such affiliation, raising early questions about the authenticity of his titles. The Presidency has pointed to that episode as part of what it describes as a pattern of false representation.
His stated academic background has proved equally difficult to pin down. Adeyemi has publicly claimed to have attended Anglican Grammar School, Igbara-Oke, studied at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology and earned a master’s degree from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Those claims have not been independently verified by government authorities or major public records.
For now, the case sits where Adeyemi says he wants it, before a court. The Presidency maintains that the council was never established and that only a judge can resolve the competing accounts. Adeyemi, for his part, is asking President Tinubu to set up an independent panel to examine the disputed documents, review the budgetary references and question the officials involved, while urging the Chief of Staff to step aside pending any inquiry.
The broader questions the affair has thrown up are unlikely to fade quickly. How a man now described as an impostor was able to operate for months from the Federal Secretariat, open accounts tied to the federal treasury and appear in a duly passed Appropriation Act speaks to gaps in oversight that go well beyond one individual. Until July 27, when the matter returns to the Federal High Court, the story of Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew remains a contest of two irreconcilable accounts, with the courts left to decide which one holds.