When something truly curious happens, such as the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) scandal, we pivot to outrage.
But that is when you learn the most about yourself and the world around you. It is time to tread cautiously, not breathe furiously.
The facts appear to be that a bogus but significant presidential agency somehow sprouted in the heart of the presidency. That form included not simply offices, equipment and personnel, but sufficient presidential placement and visibility to generate interaction with foreign interests. That form included a formidable ₦1.3 billion line in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
But incredibly, nobody at the scene of the crime, the presidency, knew about this. Somehow, the agency operated not simply within the Federal Secretariat but also interacted with the diplomatic community.
It opened accounts, including with the Central Bank of Nigeria, all without the presidency knowing anything, without the Head of the Civil Service smelling anything, and without the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hearing anything.
The “fake” agency was headed by one Matthew Adeniyi Adeyemi, a man elevated to the status of a ghost, leading his own ghost agency of hundreds of people.
The way we usually do these things, the police arrested his father as soon as the scandal broke. That is solid Nigerian police work, you know: if you capture the father or wife or young son of the alleged perpetrator, the crime is solved. That must explain why Nigeria is crime-free today.
Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, has denied allegations of involvement, threatening a ₦10 billion suit against Adeyemi. And because it is extremely important in solid police cases of this nature for the key suspects to be available to provide 24-hour evidence pollution, rather than removing themselves or being removed to make sure nothing is destroyed or contaminated, or unnecessary suspicions raised, Gbajabiamila remained at work.
President Bola Tinubu brought the full weight of the executive down. He ordered the ICPC to undertake a 30-day ICPC probe. He ordered DSS and EFCC to unmask “internal collaborators.”
For a government that has never cared to learn what being trusted means, let alone the kind you win from voters, that is a lot of thunder and lightning.
While nature’s fiercest sounds and colours do not always lead to rain, we know that in Nigerian politics, it is normally just farce and theatre.
I have proof: I have documented for two decades that what we call anti-corruption or security agencies hold accountability in contempt and do not care about integrity or credibility.
They are happy to serve power and protect the influential, but not the people, not the law, and certainly not common sense.
Consider:
That ICPC in 2025 gleefully announced that it had identified a hospital that had been fully paid for by the government FIVE times without being built, but chose to protect the identity of the thieves despite being repeatedly challenged. Leadership has followed up doggedly with the agency since then, but it has rebuffed the newspaper and even violated FOIA requests.
That EFCC has for 20 years refused to publish its obligatory annual report, thereby conniving with the National Assembly to keep Nigeria’s top crooks protected.
That DSS last year declared that on Nigeria’s insecurity question, the citizens should defend themselves because, “You do not expect the Nigerian Army, police, and SSS to protect every Nigerian.”
And then there is the Nigerian Police, which holds little commitment to true policing, and none to accountability. Even the tiny reporting requirement in Section 69 (1) of the Nigeria Police Act 2020, that every month, “…an officer in charge of a police station must report to the nearest magistrates the cases of all arrests made without warrants in his jurisdiction, whether the suspects have been admitted to bail or not,” is ignored.
These cowboys, who are laughed at internationally are the ones to lift us up? This is largely why Nigeria is a jungle, and it is why we must refuse to be tempted by the PFIPC theatre, which we are talking about only because someone made a mistake. The real order that they serve protects the mighty and the mighty while torturing the nameless. They belong to Nigeria’s most powerful crooks, and they know it.
To avoid being fooled by the PFIPC smoke-and-mirrors, cast a deep look at the Fourth Republic, and ask yourself how many other broad daylight IPCs, presidential, gubernatorial, Ministerial, Senatorial, are still being tightly protected in high places. If you are looking for how we got here, here is some help:
In 2005, I wrote a two-part article called “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…?” It looked at a few of the scandals of the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nobody identified there lost face or place.
In 2006, an anti-corruption panel constituted by President Obasanjo crafted a major report indicting some major politicians, including one Goodluck Jonathan and Bola Tinubu.
Still, in 2011, Mr Jonathan won the presidency after I had published a four-part series called “Non-Governing Governance.”
In 2015, one Muhammadu Buhari, who had posed all his life as loathing corruption, became president, established APC’s swindling of Nigerians and presided as his cronies ate Abuja alive.
In 2019, I published a two-part series called Questions For Our Children.
And then in 2023, Mr Tinubu arrived in the presidency, and made clear after just a few monthsthat he really has no grudge against the malfeasance.
That is how we got here, to a country where the World Bank begs Nigeria to nurture her own children and identifies5,000 TSA gaps. A country of which the IMF reports a massive 2% of GDP worth of public spending, about N8.8 trillion, not recorded in recent government budgets. The government provides a long response but no data rebuttal.
What the PFIPC scandal really confirms is that the truth about Nigeria is far, far worse, especially if you are keeping written records. Otherwise, you wake up in the middle of the night, convinced that you have probably just had a nightmare.
Is it governance when NNPCL’s unaccounted ₦210 trillion dispute with the Senate remains unresolved? The Auditor-General has issued no annual report for four years, and now we know that it is chronically underfunded.
But as Nigerians, we are programmed to forget, to move on. We are to believe only what they say, including that anyone, especially if he has the right name, can smuggle himself aboard the presidential jet set, the fates of Aso Rock, and into the budget.
And of this scandal, we are to let them investigate themselves and write their own history.
But this is it, Nigeria: we must insist on an independent investigation because we know the game: that an “in-house” investigation is a rigged investigation, with a predictable pattern and conclusion.
We need a thorough, full-budget review for one simple reason: that while a Nigerian crook may steal anything, it is impossible simply to help himself into the Fort Knox of Nigeria’s presidency.
We know they will be throwing loaves of bread out of electoral campaign vans. Because they think to be insecure and hungry is to be gullible.
Are you?
Sonala Olumhense
