PFIPC scandal deepens as AGF alleges forged State House letter

How a Forged State House Letter Allegedly Propped Up Nigeria’s PFIPC

Nigeria’s PFIPC scandal has moved from whispers to a paper trail war — forged letters, a disputed appointment, and a budget line now under hard legislative scrutiny.

Atlantic Post

July 28, 2026

3–4 minutes

featured, Femi Gbajabiamila, Forgery, House of Representatives, ICPC, PFIPC, Shamseldeen Ogunjimi

ABUJA, Nigeria — The scandal around the purported Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council has entered a more damaging phase, after the Accountant-General of the Federation, Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, told a House of Representatives ad hoc committee that a Treasury response which might have exposed the alleged fraud was intercepted before it reached the State House.

Ogunjimi said Treasury first received a November 2024 request on State House letterhead for an administrative code, processed it in line with procedure, and later discovered that the response had allegedly been “hijacked” by Adeniyi Adeyemi, the man accused of fronting the controversial council.

The revelation is politically explosive because the Presidency had already moved to distance itself from the PFIPC. In an official State House statement on 1 July 2026, the Presidency described Adeyemi as a man “parading himself” as head of a “fictitious” body and said the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, had first blown the whistle on the alleged fraud after complaints from the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council.

The State House also said forged appointment letters and other fake documents had been used to claim leadership of a non-existent entity.

That makes Ogunjimi’s testimony even more damaging. Premium Times reported that he told lawmakers the Treasury had approved an administrative code after receiving what appeared to be an authentic State House request, only to later discover that the State House never issued the document.

He reportedly told the committee: “That letter was never issued by the State House.” In the same hearing, he said the organisers later submitted further requests, including applications for self-accounting status, Treasury Single Account access and domiciliary accounts, while also seeking public funding.

The Budget Office has now tried to draw a hard line between budget appropriation and actual cash release. In a 24 July 2026 State House statement, Director-General Tanimu Yakubu wrote that while the National Assembly appropriated funds for the PEAC/PFIPC line, “Nothing did” move beyond that stage because the chain of controls never opened.

The Budget Office said appropriation is not cash, that multiple approvals are required before spending can happen, and that the system stopped before any public expenditure was made.

That official explanation does not, however, erase the central embarrassment: how did a disputed council, now widely described by government itself as fictitious, get far enough to appear in the national budget and to trigger administrative processes inside the Treasury?

The House committee chaired by Yusuf Gagdi is probing exactly that point, including how the council allegedly secured office accommodation in the Federal Secretariat, Abuja, and more than ₦1.32 billion in the 2026 Appropriation Act despite lacking legal recognition.

Vanguard said lawmakers were also questioning how the council obtained a government budget code at all.

The Presidency has also confirmed that the anti-corruption dragnet has widened. The State House said President Bola Tinubu ordered the ICPC to investigate the PFIPC on 7 July 2026, while the ICPC later confirmed that Gbajabiamila appeared before its investigators on 20 July 2026 and “was not arrested”; he attended voluntarily to give a statement. The commission said investigations were continuing.

There is also a personal and legal dimension to the saga. TheCable reported that Adeyemi was arrested by police operatives on 14 July in Osun State, while the same report said he had claimed Gbajabiamila issued his appointment letter — an allegation the Chief of Staff denied.

The Guardian also reported that the matter had been taken to court in Abuja, with police said to have filed charges including forgery, impersonation and obtaining by false pretence.

What makes the PFIPC affair so corrosive is not merely the allegation that documents were forged. It is the suggestion that a false paper trail may have moved far enough through the machinery of state to create a budget line, open administrative doors and confuse multiple institutions before the alarm was fully sounded.

For a government already fighting public distrust over security, inflation and state capacity, this is the kind of scandal that turns a governance question into a credibility crisis.