Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, PFIPC's director general, denies any wrongdoing

🌐 Here's What Happened

How 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.

📌 Key Details

Career civil servants were assigned there and ran a website on the government's official ".gov.ng" domain. 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.

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).

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. 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.

📰 Source: BBC Africa