By Felix Olukayode
A political storm is engulfing the Presidency after the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), an agency the government insists never existed, turned up in the 2026 Appropriation Act with a N1.3 billion allocation. The contradiction has placed Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila at the centre of a growing scandal, with opposition figures, lawyers, and civil society groups demanding an independent probe. Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, the council’s self-styled director general, has been blunt in his frustration, insisting that Gbajabiamila’s denial “is derisory because, in the real world, he should cover his face in shame.”
The controversy began when Adeyemi accused Gbajabiamila of collecting N400 million through a proxy and later demanding N200 million more to confirm his appointment, along with 48 per cent of the council’s proposed N27.4 billion take-off grant. Pushing back on claims that the council never existed, Adeyemi asked pointedly: “How did the agency’s name get into the 2026 Appropriation Bill on pages 50 and 51? If the agency does not exist yet has found its way into the Nigerian national budget, it means the entire 2026 appropriation budget is fraudulent and should be discarded.”
Central to the outrage is the budget process itself, which passes through the Budget Office, the Federal Executive Council, and both chambers of the National Assembly before presidential assent. Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation David Babachir Lawal cast doubt on the Presidency’s claim of ignorance, noting that “all such agencies report to the Office of the Secretary to the Government,” and adding, “when a line appears in the budget that has no owner, you begin to wonder.”
Atiku Abubakar described the government’s explanation as self-indicting, invoking an African proverb to argue that “the man who points at the moon should not have blood on his finger.” He went further, warning that “when termites consume a tree from within, it still appears healthy until the first storm,” and demanded a probe extending to the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Assembly.
Civil society groups added their voices to the call for scrutiny. Afenifere’s Prince Justice Faloye alleged that Gbajabiamila had become “the face of corruption” in the administration, while CISLAC’s Auwal Musa Rafsanjani warned that the scandal, if confirmed, points to “widespread lapses in administrative controls, due diligence and institutional oversight.”
Legal voices sharpened the criticism further. Lawyer Douglas Ogbankwa reportedly insisted that Gbajabiamila should resign, declaring, “he has been caught red-handed,” while Kano-based lawyer Abubakar Sani , according to reports, suggested it was an inside job, arguing it would have been “completely impossible to execute with such brazenness and impunity” without compromised officials.
Former minister Solomon Dalung was reported to have captured the unresolved core of the scandal in a single challenge to the Presidency: “If the council was fake, explain how it entered the budget.” With that question still unanswered, pressure is mounting on the Tinubu administration to reconcile its denials with the paper trail implicating its own institutions.
The scandal traces back to October 2025, when the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) complained that the PFIPC’s activities were encroaching on its statutory mandate, prompting the Presidency to act. According to the government’s account, Gbajabiamila petitioned the police and the Department of State Services, describing the council as fraudulent, which led to Adeyemi’s arrest and the recovery of allegedly forged documents. Police subsequently concluded that both the council and Adeyemi’s appointment were fictitious. The matter appeared settled until June 11, 2026, when Gbajabiamila publicly declared that the PFIPC did not exist under the Tinubu administration and warned the public against dealing with anyone claiming to represent it. Adeyemi hit back on June 25, 2026, at a press conference where he accused the Chief of Staff of soliciting bribes for his appointment, reigniting the controversy and exposing the contradiction between the government’s denial and the council’s presence in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
For a government heading into a 2027 election on the strength of an economic reform narrative, the PFIPC scandal is a gift to every opponent looking for proof that the reforms sit atop the same old rot. It hands Atiku, Obi, and every governance-focused challenger a single, easy-to-repeat line: if a fake agency can walk through the Federal Secretariat, open Central Bank accounts, and land N1.3 billion in the national budget without anyone noticing, what else has slipped through? The danger for Tinubu is not the scandal itself but the silence around it — every day without a transparent, independent probe reads less like caution and more like cover-up, and in Nigerian politics, that perception hardens fast into settled fact. Gbajabiamila, as Chief of Staff, is now a liability the President cannot easily discard without admitting failure, nor defend without absorbing the damage himself. Ultimately, this scandal will be remembered less for the money allegedly demanded than for what it revealed: that the guardrails Nigerians were told exist — budget scrutiny, legislative oversight, executive vetting — may be little more than paperwork. Going into an election year, that is not just a governance failure; it is a trust deficit the ballot box rarely forgives.