Adeniyi Adeyemi’s PFIPC: How he saved a fake presidential council from Nigeria’s national budget

To do what the PFIPC is doing, the Nigerian agency must go through other powerful offices in the government – the secretary of the federal government – effectively the chief executive of the government, the head of the civil service, the accountant-general who controls the public accounts, the budget office, and finally the parliament, which must pass the spending into law.

Babachir Lawal remains at the top of that chain.

He served as a secretary to the federal government, an office that gives agencies their place and status, under Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari.

“There is no way [that office] in a normal system they wouldn’t know that the agency is fake,” he told the BBC. “You can’t make your own budget code without the budget office knowing. There must be communication with officials inside.”

His conclusion was blunt: “You have to have officials in the system who will validate your corrupt behavior.”

Oluseun Onigbinde reaches the same point of view through a different route.

He founded BudgIT, a Nigerian transparency group that first drew attention to the council’s funding. He points out that the PFIPC does not appear in the 2023, 2024 or 2025 budgets but comes up – fully formed and with its own budget code – in 2026.

“This institution just came from the budget from the executive branch,” he said – meaning it comes from the president’s side of the government, not the parliament. “The acting head of the agency cannot do that alone. It must come from the State House [the president’s office],” he told the BBC.

Onigbinde listed the checklist the actual agency must go through – the secretary of state’s office, exit from public service, budget code, and multi-step approval to open a bank account. He said the definition of “one cheater” is not inclusive.

“I don’t know how you go through all these songs and still come out at the end and this organization is fake,” he said. “He is supported. The government should tell the truth about who are the people involved.”

The government’s own account has changed. Its spokesman initially said that Adeyemi had “fraudulently opened” an account at the Central Bank of Nigeria. The accountant-general’s office later said that no such account had ever been operated, and no public funds had been released.

The difference is important.

Even if there is no money from the treasury, this case has shown how easily the appearance of a real government institution can be created in Nigeria – a country that likes foreign investors, this council was clearly established to attract.

The BBC asked the president’s office how the agency gets its office, staff and budget line, and why it favors an internal investigation over a private one. The president’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Gbajabiamila’s lawyers said his position is written in a legal document and he is not doing interviews. In that letter, seen by the BBC, they described Adeyemi’s allegations as false and defamatory, saying the two men had never met, and demanded he withdraw or face criminal and civil charges, including a claim of 10bn naira in damages.

President Tinubu has ordered the country’s anti-corruption commission to investigate and report within 30 days, including “the role of any public official” who may have helped. Critics note that he did this while publicly declaring “100% confidence” in Gbajabiamila, who is listed as a witness in Adeyemi’s legal case. Opposition parties, lawyers and campaigners are calling for an investigation by independent judges instead.

Nigeria is no stranger to massive corruption but past scandals have tended to share the same fate: more names said, fewer convictions.

Tinubu took office in 2023 promising reforms, and points to over 7,000 convictions and over 500bn naira recovered in two years. Critics say those numbers are controlled by low-level online fraudsters, while politically connected figures are rarely touched.

What sets PFIPC apart is not the amount of money, which is modest by the standards of other past scandals, but the method. This was not a contractually recorded amount. It is said, it was an entire arm of government built from nothing.

Onigbinde describes it as “a symptom of a dysfunctional budgeting process”. Corresponding to the rapid growth of the number of government agencies: the official review of 2012 recommended the termination of Nigerian agencies, but their number has doubled, reaching more than 1,200.

“It’s a costly waste of public resources,” he said – in a country deep in debt. As the investigation escalated, its sharp impact was felt far beyond Abuja. The police who were looking for Adeyemi, who was in hiding, instead went to his family home in Ogbomoso in the south-west of Oyo state, where they arrested his elderly father, Chief Adetunji Adeniyi.