Three top security agencies, Nigeria Police, Department of State Service [DSS] and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] have been asked to jointly wade into the matter of the phantom Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council [PFIPC], the biggest scandal to envelop the three-year-old Tinubu Administration since Maryam Shetty, Betta Edu and the amnesty list.
The cops must be wondering, “the terms of reference for the probe are severely limited.” The statement by Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity Temitope Ajayi, which announced the order, said the cops are to “unmask the internal criminal elements working with Prince Matthew Adeniyi to operate a fictitious presidential agency for prosecution.” The statement also concluded the probe before it started by saying that Adeniyi is “an irredeemable con artist who is expertly exploiting Nigerian public psychology regarding corruption to shield himself from criminal accountability by dragging the name of the Chief of Staff into his multi-billion-naira fraudulent enterprise.” If the Presidency has already reached this conclusion, the cops would be wondering what else is there to investigate.
Matters are already muddled up because sensational charges of complicity, corruption and bribery have been made against a top government official, by a man who by many accounts is a con man, but whose trail has already sucked in many key government institutions, with a lot of document, financial, banking, budgetary, bureaucratic, video, photo op, office space and full colour newspaper ad trail, on top of the corpse of a key witness who is said to have mysteriously died in a hotel fire. What is the best way for the Presidency to respond to this fast developing scandal?
Two long press statements by presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga and by presidential media aide Tope Ajayi did not quench the fire. In some ways they sprinkled it with, maybe not kerosene, but with a lightly flammable spirit. Why because, the two statements opened the Presidency to another legal and ethical danger, that it could be engaging in a cover up. This is unpleasant because the infamous Watergate scandal of the early 1970s that sucked in the Nixon White House was not so much because it was accused of orchestrating the Watergate Hotel Complex burglary, but because it tried to cover up the links between some of the burglars and Nixon’s Reelection Campaign Committee, called CREEP.
At the start of the long and intense Senate enquiry into the Watergate scandal in February 1973, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee asked a question that became world famous, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” In all criminal investigation, investigators always go after the biggest fish in the scandal pond, not the small fry. So, as the three agency cops set out this week to probe this saga, they must be asking themselves, “What did the Chief of Staff know, and when did he know it?”
The logical starting point of this investigation is the State House, since in there resides the power to create agencies such as PFIPC and to make appointments such as Mr. Adeyemi’s as its Director General. I saw a story saying that the council was actually created under the Buhari Administration to replace the defunct Economic Advisory Council, that it became dormant under the Tinubu Administration, before it was somehow revived. Who revived it? Few people have the power to revive a moribund agency. Presidency says Adeyemi’s appointment letter was forged. Which is plausible, because in Nigeria today, all kinds of key documents from birth, death, health, degree and NYSC discharge certificates are forged, right under city bridges. But while a presidential appointment letter could plausible be forged, the shock element is how much spatial, staffing, financial, banking, budgetary, protocol, security and legislative impact this forged letter made before it exploded.
Our cops will now go to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation’s office to find out how Mr. Adeyemi secured posh office space in the heart of the Federal Secretariat, got it tastefully furnished, and also why SGF’s office tried to coax EFCC to release one of its confiscated buildings to PFIPC to serve as its office. Does the SGF’s office go out of its way to secure office space for an agency when it has no record of its creation or, for that matter, when it cannot establish the veracity of the appointment letter that the agency’s DG is brandishing? Let me ask SGF: if I bring a letter to you today and say it is from the Presidency and I need an office, will you give it to me and even furnish it?
Next, our investigative cops must walk into the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. The question they will ask is, if a man comes here brandishing an appointment letter from the Presidency, he is ensconsed in a choice office space high up in the Federal Secretariat, and he says he wants a waiver from the ongoing ban on employment to employ 300 staffers, will you give it to him, without so much as a phone call to the Villa to ask for permission, since the ban on employment is a presidential order? Cops will ask, if you got that permission in writing, where is the memo?
Next, our sprightly policemen will go to the Accountant General of the Federation’s office. They will ask, why did you put this man and his 300 staffers on the federal payroll, put them on IPIS, and authorize the opening of 34 agency accounts? Not being an accountant or a civil servant myself, I do not know the processes by which the Accountant General opens accounts for agencies, puts people on the payroll and pays them salaries. Could the process be less stringent than opening a microfinance bank account?
Once they are through with Accountant General, our Police, DSS and EFCC agents must walk, this time stealthily, into the Central Bank’s posh glass offices and ask a few questions of Governor Yomi Cardoso and his staffers in pinstriped suits. The question they will ask is, is it anybody who walks into CBN, brandishing a letter, that you quickly open an account for him, into which money of uncertain origin passes in and out?
I am not a Doubting Thomas, but I have my reason to doubt the tightness of CBN records. In 2010 when President Umaru Yar’adua appointed me as a member of NEITI’s National Stakeholder’s Working Group [i.e. Board], a British external auditor told us about a case he was encountering for the first time in his long auditing life. He said while auditing Nigerian oil sector accounts, he found accounts in CBN with millions of dollars in them. CBN said it was oil companies that paid the money. To his amazement, the oil companies all denied paying the money. The Whiteman said, “In all my career as an international auditor, I have heard people claiming to have paid money while the receiving party denied receiving it, but I have never heard of a case where someone was said to have paid in money but he denied paying it.”
Next, our cops must go to the National Assembly. I can see them hesitating, whether to go right to the House of Representatives or left to the Senate complex. They will ask the MPs, “You guys took several months to scrutinize and pass the federal budget 2026, through several committees and the Committee of the Whole. How did PFIPC sneak into it? Was it a Principal Officer’s constituency project?”
Before our cops go over to EFCC, the EFCC agent will pretend to go to the toilet, since he cannot question Mr. Olukayode, so the police and DSS men will go in alone. They will say, “EFCC Chairman, we saw your picture receiving Mr. Adeyemi in your office with full honours. You, who is supposed to fish out money launderers and scammers, how come that you were scammed by a con artist?”
As they leave EFCC offices to go to Police Headquarters, the EFCC agent will reappear but the policeman in the team will vanish and claim he has running stomach. I am not surprised because I remember a story from the 1970s, when a magistrate in Kaduna ordered a police sergeant in the court to produce an AIG who was involved in a land dispute. The police sergeant promptly did dubale in front of the magistrate and pleaded to be excused because there was no way he could go and arrest an AIG. Our policeman having chickened out, the DSS and EFCC agents will proceed to interview the Inspector General of Police. They will ask him, “IG, how and why did you give Mr. Adeyemi a police orderly? Isn’t there a presidential order to withdraw police escorts from all VIPs?”
Finally, the cops from the three agencies will walk into State House, past the Guards Brigade, past the Mobile Police Unit and past the Presidential Bodyguards, into COS’s office and ask him, “Sir, what did you know about this agency, the appointment letter, the office space, the police orderly, the staff waiver, the budget, the account openings and the elegant conferences, and when did you know it?”