How fake govt agency got almost $1m budget in Nigeria – BBC investigation

A BBC investigation has revealed how the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council operated for months with government offices, career civil servants, a .gov.ng website and a N1.3 billion budget allocation — before the Presidency declared it had never legally existed, triggering questions about deep institutional complicity within Nigeria’s federal bureaucracy.

It had offices in the Federal Secretariat. It had civil servants. It had a government website. It had a line in the national budget. According to Nigeria’s Presidency, it never existed.

A BBC investigation into the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) scandal has laid bare one of the most extraordinary episodes in Nigeria’s recent history — not because of the money involved, but because of what it reveals about the ease with which an entire arm of government can apparently be conjured from nothing.

Director General Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew met cabinet ministers, financial regulators and foreign diplomats. The council secured approval to hire 300 staff during a government-wide recruitment freeze. When President Tinubu signed the 2026 budget into law, the PFIPC was in it — with a N1.3 billion allocation and its own budget code.

Then the Presidency said it was all built on one forged letter.

But that explanation has satisfied almost no one. Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal was blunt in his assessment to the BBC: “There’s no way [that office] in a normal system would not know that the agency is fake. You must have officials within the system who will validate your corrupt behaviour.”

BudgIT co-founder Oluseun Onigbinde, whose organisation first flagged the council’s funding, pointed out that the PFIPC appeared nowhere in the 2023, 2024 or 2025 budgets — then surfaced fully formed with its own budget code in 2026. “The functional head of the agency cannot just do that alone. It has to come from the State House,” he told the BBC.

The government’s account has already shifted — its spokesman initially said Adeyemi had “fraudulently opened” a Central Bank account; the accountant-general’s office later said no such account was ever activated.

Meanwhile, police searching for the fugitive Adeyemi instead detained his elderly father in Ogbomoso — a move his lawyer Femi Falana described as illegal.

President Tinubu has ordered the anti-corruption commission to investigate within 30 days, while declaring “100% confidence” in Chief of Staff Gbajabiamila — who is listed as a prosecution witness in Adeyemi’s criminal case.

Opposition parties and senior lawyers are demanding an independent judicial inquiry instead.