The documents obtained by Saturday PUNCH have thrown the Presidency’s flat denial that the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council “never existed” into serious doubt. On November 21, 2024, the Permanent Secretary, General Services Office, Nnamdi Maurice Mbaeri, acting for the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, formally forwarded a request from PFIPC’s self-described Director-General, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, asking for office accommodation from recovered Federal Government properties. Registry stamps confirm the SGF’s office received Adeyemi’s letter on November 12 and treated PFIPC as one of three government institutions seeking space. That paper trail means a body the Presidency now calls “fictitious” was processed through the federal bureaucracy, given a reference number SH/DG/PFIPC/RQ/107, and routed to the EFCC for action.
The contradiction exposes a deeper institutional problem: Nigeria’s system often legitimizes entities based on the appearance of official paperwork rather than legal existence. The country already has a statutory investment agency, the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, established by law to serve as the one-stop-shop for investors. Adeyemi’s letter lifted NIPC’s exact language, claiming PFIPC was the “resource and coordinating centre for the Nation’s Foreign Investment Promotion activities.” Creating a parallel council with no enabling Act would directly conflict with the Oronsaye Report on reducing MDAs, which the current administration says it supports. Yet the bureaucracy did not flag the duplication at the registry stage. The letter moved, a file was opened, and a Permanent Secretary acted on it, which suggests either a forged letterhead was unusually convincing or internal collaborators greased the process.
The Presidency’s response has been to isolate Adeyemi as a lone criminal. Special Adviser Bayo Onanuga maintains the council is fake, that Adeyemi forged a presidential appointment letter purportedly signed by Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila, and that he impersonated a public officer to meet diplomats and write the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for visa help. The Federal Government has now charged Adeyemi and listed Gbajabiamila among 11 witnesses. At the same time, presidential aide Temitope Ajayi concedes “internal collaborators enabled Adeniyi to get this far” and says DSS, Police, and EFCC must dismantle the network. That admission shifts the issue from individual fraud to systemic breach. If a man could operate 34 bank accounts, secure a .gov.ng domain that was active until April 2025, and convene meetings with foreign nationals under a presidential banner, the question becomes how many layers of verification failed.
Opposition parties and civil society are focusing on the money trail. The ADC and NDC allege N24bn was budgeted for PFIPC and that it opened accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria, while the charge sheet references bank accounts opened in the names of purported government agencies. Femi Falana has asked ICPC to investigate those CBN accounts, the budget line, and the role of the Chief of Staff, arguing that the Presidency cannot clear anyone. The core allegation is not just impersonation but the possible diversion of public funds through an entity that had no legal life yet enjoyed administrative recognition. Banks do not open government accounts without a Treasury Single Account code, a TIN, and mandates from the Accountant-General, so the probe must establish who signed off and whether any releases were made.
What makes the PFIPC case resonate is how ordinary its methods were. The council survived from at least November 2024 until Adeyemi’s arrest in October 2025 because it mimicked the language of reform, used the coat of arms, and entered the registry. Registries rarely test whether an agency exists; once a letter carries a reference number it is treated as real. Nigeria’s investment space is already crowded with NIPC, NEPC, NOTAP, and state IPAs, so another acronym did not trigger alarms. Add the pressure on MDAs to show foreign investment wins, and a “Presidential Council” promising to “maximize foreign direct investments” becomes politically convenient. Due diligence loses to optics.
The episode also intersects with Nigeria’s wider digital vulnerability. In March 2026 the hacker group Bytetobreach leaked sensitive data from Sterling Bank and Remita. That same year, forged presidential letterheads were allegedly used to request Note Verbale from the Foreign Ministry. The common weakness is authentication. NITDA’s rules say a .gov.ng domain requires a letter from a Permanent Secretary. Someone provided that letter for http://pfipc.gov.ng. Until the system verifies the existence of an agency before issuing domains, opening files, or assigning budget codes, the bureaucracy will keep automating trust and laundering legitimacy.
The way forward is not another press statement but a forensic audit. ICPC should trace how the SGF file was opened, who approved the .gov.ng domain, whether any budgetary releases occurred, and who the signatories were to CBN accounts linked to PFIPC. The SGF should publish a live, public register of all MDAs with their enabling laws and budget codes, and any correspondence from entities not on that list should be auto-rejected. The National Assembly needs to summon the SGF, Accountant-General, and NITDA to explain the breakdown in verification. Adeyemi must face trial, and if there are internal collaborators, the DSS must name them. The death of Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola in a fire cannot be the end of that inquiry.
Ultimately, the PFIPC affair is not just about one alleged fraudster. It is about a government that can deny an agency’s existence while its own paperwork says otherwise. Nigeria’s real investment problem is credibility. When a fictitious council can get mail from the SGF, hold meetings at Wells Carlton, and write the Foreign Ministry for visas, the message to genuine investors is that process can be gamed and the state does not always know who it is. Capital inflows will not fix that. Only a bureaucracy that verifies before it files will. Until then, PFIPC stands as a case study of how a letterhead can become a government, and how a government can disown it only after the arrest.
