To Protect Chief of Staff Gbajabiamila Amid Agency Bribery Scandal, Tinubu’s Presidency Publishes Half-Truth
An individual recently revealed that he fell out with President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff after he declined to part with 48 per cent of a N27.39 billion take-off grant for a sketchy agency after he initially collected N400 million by proxy to secure him appointment as the head of said agency. It is a part of a bigger scandal.
On June 11, Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, issued a disclaimer stating that the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) did not exist under the Presidency and that no appointment had been made to it, in response to Adeniyi Adeyemi’s claim to be PFIPC’s Director General.
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Adeyemi, in turn, rejected the disclaimer at a press conference on June 25. He questioned how the council could have appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Act if it did not exist, as Gbajabiamila claimed.
“The national budget does not emerge in isolation. It passes through multiple layers of technical drafting, executive coordination, ministerial inputs, budget office review, and finally legislative scrutiny by both chambers of the National Assembly, where COS has meritoriously served for good 20 years and rose from Minority to Majority leaders and Speaker for four years,” Adeyemi said.
“So the question becomes unavoidable: at what point in this process did references to a non-existent agency allegedly enter the official record? And if they are indeed present in official documentation, what does that imply about the integrity of the process that produced and approved those documents?”
Among other statements he made at the press conference, Adeyemi mentioned that the council had an office at the Federal Secretariat, a domiciliary account and a Treasury Single Account in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and it had received approval for more than 300 staff from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service.
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Days later, on Tuesday, Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President, called on Tinubu to suspend Gbajabiamila pending an independent investigation.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, issued a press statement on behalf of the Presidency. The statement, in summary, traced the issue’s origins to a complaint from the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) in October 2025.
What the statement did not mention or explain was how an agency the Presidency insists never existed passed through numerous processes to appear in the federal government’s 2026 Appropriation Act, with a budget of more than N1.3 billion.
FIJ examined the Appropriation Act, weighed the Presidency’s account against ongoing reporting on the council’s activities, and checked public claims made about Adeyemi’s background.
HOW AN ITEM GETS INTO THE FEDERAL BUDGET
A spending line for any Ministry, Department or Agency (MDA) typically has to survive several stages before it becomes law. The originating institution submits a budget proposal, usually built around approved personnel and project structures. The Budget Office of the Federation reviews and consolidates these proposals into the draft budget.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) considers and approves the draft before transmitting it to the National Assembly. Both chambers in the Assembly then subject it to committee scrutiny and public hearings before passage, after which the President signs it into law.
WHAT THE APPROPRIATION ACT SHOWS
FIJ’s review of the 2026 Appropriation Act confirms that the PFIPC and Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) are listed in the budget alongside other MDAs such as the Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
The agency had a total allocation of N1,302,978,784, comprising N802,978,783 for personnel costs, N200,000,001 for overhead and N300,000,000 for capital expenditure.
The agency’s capital allocation in the budget is itemised into 10 distinct, newly listed projects, including logistics for hosting the “World Investment Summit 2026”, and a string of what appears to be professional training courses, among them a Harvard Program on Negotiation, a Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) course, an intensive World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade negotiations course and courses on strategic investment management and negotiation skills.
CONTRADICTIONS THE PRESIDENCY’S STATEMENT DOES NOT ADDRESS
Onanuga’s statement noted that after receiving complaints from the NIPC that the PEAC/PFIPC were clashing with its purposes, Gbajabiamila’s office wrote to the DSS and the police in October 2025 to investigate the agency and its supposed head.
“The office of the Chief of Staff to the President first blew the whistle on the existence of the illegal agency, following complaints from officials of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council that another government agency appeared to be functioning at cross-purposes with it. The Chief of Staff, on October 17, 2025, in a letter, asked the DSS and the Police to probe the activities of ‘fraudsters and imposters’ forging appointment letters purportedly from his office,” it reads in part.
The statement further claimed that a copy of Adeyemi’s forged appointment letter, a copy of the request for a note verbal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and pictures of engagements obtained from the illegal agency’s website were sent alongside the petition to the DSS and police. The forged letter was not included in the press statement.
Meanwhile, the statement noted that the Foreign Affairs Ministry had written to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF) through the Office of the National Security Adviser, among other non-governmental bodies, to clarify the status of both the agency and Adeyemi, its supposed head.
“The Chief of Staff sent his own clear rebuttal to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, stating that he had never issued an appointment letter to Adeyemi as director general of the fake presidential foreign investment promotion council,” the statement from the presidency states.
“The Chief of Staff could not have issued a letter of appointment to a non-existent agency. Moreover, the Chief of Staff does not make appointments or write letters, as these are the exclusive preserve of the Office of the Secretary of the Government of the Federation. On November 5, 2025, the Chief of Staff responded to the OSGF, again flatly denying Adeniyi Adeyemi and his spurious agency.
“ ‘Prince Adeniyi Matthew, director-general of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, is unknown to any office, nor do we have any dealings with the said council. My attention was drawn to a letter of this purported application, which is fake, and my office has instructed the police and other relevant security agencies to carry out investigations on the person and the entity he claims to represent’, the chief of staff wrote.”
After this, the statement noted that the police responded to Gbajabiamila’s petition and arrested Adeyemi on October 27 at the Secretariat Office in Abuja. “On 27 October, Adeyemi was arrested in Abuja at the Secretariat office where he operated his elaborate scam. The police searched the office and Adeyemi’s home in Suleja, recovering vital documents and exhibits,” it contained.
“In Adeyemi’s statement to the police, he claimed that one Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola assisted him in procuring the fake appointment letter. Following his claim, the police went after the said Tanimola. The Police found that Tanimola died in a fire incident at Kachi Hotel in Abuja on 22 October, five days before Adeyemi’s arrest. Tanimola’s body was seen by the police at the morgue, confirming the death.
“The police were able to establish that the agency Adeyemi purportedly headed was fictitious, that he forged his appointment letter and the documents recovered in his office and home, that he falsely paraded himself as a government appointee, and that he falsely solicited a note verbal from the Foreign Affairs Ministry to enable him and his staff to obtain US visas.
“The police also found that Adeyemi operated 34 bank accounts, with nine opened in the names of his fictitious agencies, known as the FCT Investment Promotion Agency and the Public Private Partnership (FIPA-APP), and the FCT Investment Promotion Act. The Police found that Adeyemi, using the fake documents he created, fraudulently opened a CBN account by misleading the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. According to the police, no government money has been transferred into the account.”
In all of this, the statement did not explain how the agency appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Bill, passing through numerous offices and processes. The statement also ignored press coverage of Adeyemi’s meetings with national stakeholders.
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In July 2025, three months before Gbajabiamila stated that his office first became aware of the council’s activities, Adeyemi, described as Director General of the PEAC/PFIPC, had met Benjamin Kalu, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, to discuss legislative support for investment promotion. A report on the meeting also announced a “World Investment Summit” planned for November 2025, and it resurfaced as a funded line item in the 2026 budget under the same council.
In September 2025, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) both separately confirmed engagements with Adeyemi’s delegation. The EFCC received him and his team for discussions on foreign direct investment, and NERC engaged with the council over preparations for the same summit.
None of these institutional interactions was addressed in the Presidency’s statement.
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ADENIYI ADEYEMI
Publicly available information on Adeyemi is fraught with spurious claims. Between 2016 and 2017, reports carried by several Nigerian outlets, including Punch, described Adeyemi’s assumption of office as the newly elected President-General of the World Youth Organisation, which the report called the youth organ of the United Nations (UN).
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The reports noted that Adeyemi was to assume duty at UN headquarters in Geneva, and that he had served as an aide to Ban Ki-moon, the then UN Secretary General. To verify the authenticity of the organisation, FIJ checked the UN System — which contains a list of funds, programmes and agencies affiliated with the international organisation — but did not find any organisation named the ‘World Youth Organisation’.
Meanwhile, a Google search returned an organisation with the same name. It is an unaffiliated youth nonprofit organisation with no claimed link to the UN, to Nigeria or to Adeyemi.
A tribute piece published in October 2025 described Adeyemi as an alumnus of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology and the Western University of Ontario in Canada. It also credited him with titles such as “Grand Commander of World Youth United Nations Organisation (2016)” and “United Nations Award of Most Excellent Youth in the World (2018)”.
The article also claimed that he served as Special Adviser to the Osun State Governor on Investment Promotion. FIJ could not confirm this at press time.
COURT CASE
Following their investigation into Adeyemi, Onanuga’s statement noted, the police filed charges against him and two of his supposed accomplices on November 27 2025. “Based on their investigations, the police filed an eight-count charge at the Federal High Court in Abuja against Adeyemi and two of his accomplices on November 27, 2025. He is due in court on July 27,” the statement reads.
“Adeyemi was on police bail when he recently claimed that the Chief of Staff had appointed him as DG of the fictitious agency. This claim contradicted his statement to the police in November last year. His new claim prompted the Chief of Staff, on June 8, to issue a disclaimer consistent with earlier advisories that the man, called Adeyemi, is an impostor.”
Femi Falana, a seasoned human rights lawyer, plans to represent Adeyemi in court.
Credit: FIJ
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