How a fake presidential council ended up with a budget of almost $1m in Nigeria

A significant story is unfolding on the international scene. How a fake presidential council ended up with a budget of almost $1m in NigeriaImage source, Instagram / @princeadeyemi_adeniyiImage caption, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, PFIPC's director general, denies any wrongdoingByChiamaka DikeBBC Africa, Reporting fromLagosPublished3 hours agoHow did an organisation with government offices, civil servants and a line in Nigeria's national budget turn out to have no legal basis for existing? For much of 2025, nothing set the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) apart from the many other agencies that make up Nigeria's federal bureaucracy. It presented itself as a body created to attract foreign investment into Africa's most populous country, operating from an office inside the Federal Secretariat in Abuja - the huge complex that houses Nigeria's government ministries.

Career civil servants were assigned there and ran a website on the government's official ". It even won approval to hire more than 300 staff, at a time when the government had frozen public-sector recruitment. The website has been taken down but its Instagram account, external is still working.

The Details

Its director general, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, met cabinet ministers, financial regulators, the head of Nigeria's anti-corruption agency and foreign diplomats. When the 2026 national budget was signed into law, the council was in it, with an allocation of 1. 3bn naira ($950,000; £700,000).

Then, last month, the government said it was all a fiction. The presidency announced that the PFIPC had never been created by law, by presidential order nor by any other official instrument. Its apparent legitimacy, officials said, rested on a single forged document - an appointment letter claiming that President Bola Tinubu had made Adeyemi the council's director general.

Investigators say the letter carried the forged signature of Femi Gbajabiamila, the president's chief of staff and most senior aide. He insists the council was lawfully set up in 2024 and that he was properly appointed. He has also accused senior officials of demanding bribes to secure his job and later trying to seize the council's funds.

What Experts Say

The presidency denies his claims. Although he has gone into hiding saying he fears for his life, he has said he will appear in court later this month to answer charges including forgery and impersonation. Police have launched a manhunt for him.

But the scandal has already grown beyond the question of one forged letter. Investigators are now examining how far the machinery of the Nigerian state moved on Adeyemi's behalf - and who inside it allowed that to happen.

The story has become one of the most prominent items on the global agenda.