ICPC Report To Tinubu Faults Five Agencies Over Phantom PFIPC
Thirty days after President Bola Tinubu ordered a full investigation into one of the strangest scandals of his administration, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission returned to the Presidential Villa on Thursday with an interim report that confirmed what the Presidency had insisted since July: the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council never existed in law, yet it existed almost everywhere else.
ICPC Chairman, Dr Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, who briefed State House correspondents after submitting the report to the President in Abuja, said investigators had established conclusively that Mr Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew was never appointed by the Federal Government and that the council, also rendered in some documents as the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, was never created by any law, Executive Order or valid government instrument. The commission recommended his immediate prosecution.
“The appointment letter presented by the suspect, along with other supporting documents, was completely forged and did not originate from the Presidency,” Aliyu said.
The commission went further, disclosing that investigators had uncovered two additional fictitious bodies allegedly created by the same suspect using forged legislative instruments: the FCT Investment Promotion Agency and the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency/Public Private Partnership. Both, according to the ICPC, were used to open accounts in a commercial bank and carry out unauthorised activities. Investigators also found that the suspect had unlawfully taken over the office of the defunct Presidential Economic Advisory Council after gaining unauthorised access to the facility, using the address to project legitimacy before visitors, government officials and foreign diplomats.
On the question that has dominated public debate, the ICPC chairman was categorical. “No Federal Government funds were approved or disbursed to the fake agency, and no security breach was found within the Presidency or the Central Bank of Nigeria,” he said.
What the commission did find was institutional failure. “The investigation identified weaknesses in verification processes, inter-agency coordination and oversight across several Ministries, Departments and Agencies, including the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, the Budget Office and the National Information Technology Development Agency,” Aliyu said, adding that negligence by some public officers allowed the operation to run undetected for an extended period.
Three recommendations followed: prosecution of Adeyemi, administrative sanctions against officers whose omissions enabled the scheme, and reforms to strengthen internal controls across the affected MDAs. The report is interim, with criminal investigations continuing to identify possible collaborators before charges are filed.
The figure at the centre of the storm is precise. The council’s proposal appeared on pages 50 and 51 of the 2026 budget estimates under code 0111062001, carrying a total expenditure of N1,302,978,784. Set against the N68.32tn 2026 Appropriation Act which President Tinubu signed on 17 April 2026, that sum represents less than 0.002 per cent of federal spending. The same Act earmarks N4.799tn for statutory transfers, N15.8tn for debt service, N15.4tn for recurrent non debt expenditure and N32.2tn for capital projects. The original proposal laid before the National Assembly on 19 December 2025 was N58.47tn, later revised upward by about N9.85tn at the President’s request.
The smallness of the sum is precisely why lawmakers treated it as a systems failure rather than a theft. Moving the motion that created the House ad hoc committee on 8 July 2026, Hon. Yusuf Adamu Gagdi (APC, Plateau) argued that the entry pointed to glaring weaknesses in the appropriation system and raised the possibility that similar entities had passed through earlier budgets undetected. The House directed that every MDA listed in the 2025 and 2026 Appropriation Frameworks be verified against its enabling law, and asked the Office of the Accountant-General to confirm that no warrant would be honoured on any PFIPC linked line.
The Senate took a different route. A point of order by Senator Kawu Sumaila seeking a parallel inquiry was ruled out by Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin, who said the chamber would await the ICPC’s findings. The Senate has maintained that the allocation was “neither recommended nor inserted” by the National Assembly.
Testimony before the Gagdi committee has traced a paper trail rather than a payment trail. Accountant-General Shamseldeen Ogunjimi told lawmakers his office approved an administrative code after receiving what appeared to be authentic State House correspondence, later found never to have been issued, and that a staff member identified as Bello Abdullahi diverted correspondence meant for the Permanent Secretary, State House. Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Esther Didi Walson-Jack, conceded due diligence failure. “We now, having seen all the facts and observed all the documents, concede that we ought to have carried out more due diligence in discharge of the duties of the office in issuing an authorised establishment and a recruitment waiver to the PEAC/PFIPC,” she told the panel.
The State House told the committee on Thursday that it never requested a budget code and knew nothing of the council until media reports appeared. In a memorandum dated 6 August 2026 and signed by Corps Marshal Shehu Mohammed, the Federal Road Safety Corps defended its issuance of seven official Federal Government number plates to the body, saying the approvals followed established procedure based on documents that appeared genuine. On 5 August, a businessman, Gbenga Collins, told the same panel he paid N400m to Adeyemi to facilitate a contract award.
The scandal broke publicly after Adeyemi alleged that the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, demanded 48 per cent of a purported N27.3bn take off grant, claiming N400m was paid through a proxy and a further N200m sought. Gbajabiamila has denied every element and filed a N15bn defamation suit at the FCT High Court, seeking N10bn general damages, N5bn aggravated damages and N200m costs. “The claimant has never met the defendant, never held any meeting with him and has never authorised any intermediary, representative, agent or proxy to demand or receive money on his behalf,” the filing states. He appeared before the ICPC on 20 July to volunteer information.
Adeyemi, 38, has rejected the ICPC’s competence, calling in an open letter to the President for an “independent” and “multi-stakeholder” panel. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar similarly demanded a ten member special commission of inquiry. Adeyemi and two others listed as at large face an eight count charge, marked FHC/ABJ/CR/562/2025 and filed by the police on 27 November 2025, covering conspiracy, forgery of a presidential appointment letter dated on or about 8 March 2024, forgery of presidential letterheads and false personation, contrary to the Miscellaneous Offences Act. Justice Mohammed Umar issued a bench warrant in July after four failed appearances, and he was rearrested. He remains presumed innocent until convicted.
Nigeria’s fiscal system has a long history of phantom entries. The ICPC uncovered N3.9bn embedded in the 2019 constituency projects budget without allocation to any project. Its Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Initiative covered 1,500 projects worth N610bn across 22 states in its 2024 phase alone, saving about N30bn. Cumulatively, Aliyu told the 16th Regional Conference of Heads of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Commonwealth Africa in Yaoundé, the initiative has tracked projects worth more than N22.9tn, recovered over N4.9bn and saved more than N91.4bn. In July 2026, the commission secured forfeiture of N942m linked to 908 suspected ghost workers across 50 federal agencies. In the first half of 2022, it had traced N49.9bn to suspected ghost payroll entries.
The pattern is consistent: ghost workers, ghost projects, and now a ghost agency with an office, a signage, number plates, a recruitment waiver and a budget code. The House panel is expected to lay its findings before the chamber, while the ICPC’s final report will determine whether prosecution extends beyond one man to the officials whose signatures made the fiction work.