The PFIPC saga is one scandal, too many. The joke is on Aso Rock. What exposed the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council scandal is not the altruism of some high-minded public officials. No! It is as a result of a sharing formula that went awry because the conspirators refused to abide by the “there is honour among thieves” dictum. Nigerians should be worried about the legions of illegal MDAs still in operation because the villains running them are faithful to their agreed sharing formula.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Nigeria is a country where scandals break at the speed of light. As a public commentator, you can hardly keep pace.
On May 15, 2026, terrorists raided three schools in the Oriire local government area of Oyo State, abducting 46 people, including 39 schoolchildren. The victims, who include seven teachers and a toddler, have spent almost two months at God knows where. Two teachers were killed – one of them during the raid while the other, Mr. Michael Oyedokun, a mathematics teacher, was beheaded in captivity.
On the same day, terrorists also struck in Borno State, whisking away more than 50 schoolchildren from Mussa Central Primary and Junior Secondary schools in Askira-Uba local government area. Most of the children are below the age of 10. Despite the initial outrage, Nigerians have moved on as they are wont to do.
Scandals have very short lifespan in Nigeria. And our leaders know that for sure, which is why they always sit it out no-matter how ruinous, knowing that after one week, the rage will be over and the whole matter will be forgotten.
One month after the schoolchildren abductions, retired Major General Rabe Abubakar, former Director of Defence Information, who was abducted alongside his wife on May 30 in Katsina State, died in captivity. It is scandalous that till date, no one can exactly say what caused his death. While the Katsina State government claimed that he died from complications related to diabetes and hypertension while in captivity, his family strongly disputed the claim, stating instead that he died from a snakebite. Why the state government officially attributed his tragic death in the kidnappers den to his underlying health conditions, even as his children insisted he had no history of diabetes remains an unanswered question. And I dare say it will never be answered. The outrage is over. He has been forgotten and Nigerians have moved on.
More students have been kidnapped since the Oriire abductions. On June 29, terrorists attacked Government Day Secondary School, Lassa, in the beleaguered Askira/Uba local government area, abducting dozens of students writing NECO examination. Two teachers and one soldier were killed during the assault.
Notwithstanding the fact that troops of Operation Hadin Kai swiftly rescued 10 of the victims, including a vice principal, teachers, and NECO candidates, 37 of the children and women selling food items within the school premises remain unaccounted for. Barely one week after families of the victims staged peaceful protests demanding urgent government intervention, nobody is talking about the remaining captives again. Nigerians, inured to scandals, no matter how horrendous, have moved on.
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Whether it is the scandal of children being abducted from their schools moments after soldiers deployed to provide security were withdrawn without any explanation or people without the requisite educational qualifications finding themselves in the corridors of power or the absurdity of politicians claiming to have attended schools that were not in existence as at the time of their purported graduation and going ahead to submit such patently fake credentials to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), nothing shocks Nigerians anymore because scandal has become a staple diet.
In-between these scandalous security breaches, there are financial scandals. On Wednesday, July 1, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) resident representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, said the country had about 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) worth of public spending (about N8.83 trillion) not recorded in recent official budgets.
The implication as Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2027 elections, noted is that the Tinubu administration is awarding multi-trillion naira contracts, moving massive public capital, and commissioning infrastructure projects entirely beyond the reach of the Auditor-General, the nation’s procurement laws, and the legitimate oversight of the National Assembly. Atiku calls it “a parallel fiscal universe” governed by executive whim and shielded from constitutional accountability. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) calls it “horrible.”
But who cares what Obi and Atiku think or say when the people know that it is a matter of days, if not hours, before news of another scandal breaks. It is a vicious cycle – a self-perpetuating chain of negative events. We are a people trapped in an endless downward spiral. So, less than one week thence, the story that ordinarily will make any sane country quake has disappeared, literally, from the news. Nigerians have taken it in their putative stride.
Why? Because another scandal has supplanted it. This time, it is one Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), an agency the Tinubu administration claims is non-existent.
Adeyemi demurs, insisting that the agency not only exists but has the imprimatur of the presidency. The problem, he claims, is his refusal to give President Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, 48% of the agency’s N27.4 billion takeoff grant as allegedly demanded after paying a N400 million bribe to secure the job, with an outstanding N200 million to pay.
The presidency hurriedly queued behind Gbajabiamila, one of their own. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga urged Nigerians not to allow Adeyemi, a “con artist” with a history of fraudulent misrepresentation to hoodwink them. The police, Onanuga further claimed, had investigated the matter and established that the agency Adeyemi headed was fake. The police also found out, according to the presidency, Gbajabiamila’s primary constituency, that Adeyemi forged his appointment letter, falsely paraded himself as a government appointee, falsely solicited a note verbal from the Foreign Affairs Ministry to enable him and his staff to obtain US visas, operated 34 bank accounts, used fake documents to open a CBN account. Only in Nigeria!
And then, an unforced error. The police also uncovered, Onanuga revealed, that the middleman between Adeyemi, the con-artist, and Gbajabiamila, Tinubu’s guardian angel, one Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola, “died in a fire incident at Kachi Hotel in Abuja” on October 22, 2025, five days before Adeyemi’s arrest. The suspect’s star witness died mysteriously before the police mustered the courage to file charges against him in court. How convenient!
But the presidency’s defence of Gbajabiamila has raised more questions than it provided answers. How possible is it for one private citizen to invent a presidential agency, forge his own appointment letter, secure office space inside the Federal Secretariat, recruit staff, hold meetings with diplomats, correspond with government institutions, open a CBN account through official channels and wangle his “fake” agency into the Appropriation Act with a N1.3 billion allocation. If one man can pull off this scam, Nigeria has, indeed, become worse than a banana republic under Tinubu’s watch.
But the truth remains that Onanuga’s narrative, as usual, beggars belief. There are, simply, too many moving parts. The questions that need to be answered are: Who assigned the office space at the National Secretariat? Who created the budget line for the “non-existent” agency? Who approved it? Who authorised staff postings? Who facilitated CBN account opening? Was the N27.4 billion takeoff grant paid? If yes, by who? If no, with which funds was the agency run? Already, the Senate has washed its hands off the mess, pushing it back to the executive.
Apparently, the Tinubu regime takes Nigerians for fools. Onanuga as Special Adviser on Information and Strategy speaks for the president. In his July 1 statement earlier referenced, he claimed that the police having thoroughly investigated Adeyemi on the strength of Gbajabiamila’s October 17, 2025 petition to the DSS and police, found him solely responsible for his crime, arrested him on October 27, 2025 and filed an eight-count charge against him at the Federal High Court in Abuja on November 27, 2025. The matter was subsequently adjourned to July 27, 2026.
Simply put, Adeyemi is currently standing trial on charges of conspiracy, forgery and impersonation, prosecuted by the Tinubu regime, with Gbajabiamila and 10 others as prosecution witnesses.
So, how can the same Tinubu order another “thorough investigation” when he had already cleared Gbajabiamila of culpability? In any case, the same president who is ordering a thorough investigation just appointed Gbajabiamila a member of the Presidential Working Group saddled with the responsibility of preparing the legal framework for implementing state police across the country. To the discerning, that appointment at this critical moment is a loud statement from the president. It is tantamount to saying, “This is my beloved aide in whom I am well pleased.”
Ideally, if Tinubu wanted a “thorough investigation,” Gbajabiamila would have been asked to step aside until the investigation is concluded. That is global best practice. Stepping aside is not a pronouncement of guilt on him. It is the right thing to do. It strengthens the process and engenders fairness. The president’s body language communicated through the state police assignment has foreclosed that.
Instead, the presidency is trying so hard to convict Adeyemi in the court of public opinion and using state might to crush him even before he gets the chance of having his day in the court.
On Monday, police raided the Ogbomosho home of his parents and arrested his father. The same day Gbajabiamila threatened a N10 billion suit over what he called Adeyemi’s defamatory remarks. His counsel, Kemi Pinheiro, gave him 72 hours to take down all videos and comments in which he made allegations that are “malicious, reckless and entirely without factual foundation” and targeted at showing Gbajabiamila as “corrupt, morally bankrupt, and a murderer.”
This is sheer legal subterfuge and presidential high-handedness. Nigerians are not impressed. The PFIPC saga is one scandal, too many. The joke is on Aso Rock. What exposed the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council scandal is not the altruism of some high-minded public officials. No! It is as a result of a sharing formula that went awry because the conspirators refused to abide by the “there is honour among thieves” dictum. Nigerians should be worried about the legions of illegal MDAs still in operation because the villains running them are faithful to their agreed sharing formula.
