‘Phantom’ council got our approval without due diligence – HoS admits

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has admitted before a House of Representatives panel that her office granted official establishment approvals and recruitment waivers to the phantom Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council based on documents now confirmed as entirely fabricated — including a forged appointment letter bearing no resemblance to the Chief of Staff’s actual signature and a fake establishment Act missing every feature of a genuine National Assembly statute.

Nigeria’s civil service machinery was systematically fooled — and the admissions before the House panel on Wednesday were extraordinary.

Head of the Civil Service of the Federation Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack told the House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee probing the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council that her office issued an authorised establishment and recruitment waiver to the phantom agency based on documents now confirmed as forgeries, as reported by Daily Trust

“We now concede that we ought to have carried out more due diligence in the discharge of the duties of the office,” Walson-Jack acknowledged before the committee.

The scale of the fabrication revealed during the hearing was breathtaking. Committee Chairman Yusuf Gagdi placed the appointment letter submitted by the PFIPC alongside authentic correspondence from the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President and asked the Head of Service to compare the signatures. Her response was unambiguous. “I can clearly see that the signatures are not the same,” she said.

Gagdi went further, noting that a Nigeria Police Force forensic examination had already confirmed the signatures did not match — and that no attempt had even been made to imitate the original. “If something is forged, there will be an attempt to imitate the original signature. In this case, there was not even an attempt. The signatures are completely different,” he stated.

The purported establishment Act fared no better under scrutiny. Gagdi told the committee the document lacked an Act number, gazette number, gazette title and every other statutory identifier required of a genuine National Assembly Act. “The Act presented to government institutions was totally mutilated,” he said.

Despite the fraudulent foundation, the phantom agency managed to secure office space at the Phase III Federal Secretariat, obtain approvals for 300 staff members, open domiciliary accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria and secure a N1.3 billion allocation in the 2026 Appropriation Act.

The committee also revealed that suspect Adeniyi Adeyemi personally collected a State House verification letter from the Office of the Accountant-General. All approvals previously granted to the PFIPC have since been withdrawn.