Ghost Agencies, Short Memories, And Ancestral Shame

To produce one living Nigerian today, biology required a spectacular ancestral relay race. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so forth, doubling backward until the arithmetic reaches 2,048 ancestors in the eleventh preceding generation. Added together, the listed generations total 4,094 ancestral positions. Strictly speaking, the popular calculation describes eleven generations, not twelve, and probably stretches across roughly three centuries rather than one hundred years. Pedigree collapse also means some ancestors may occupy more than one position in the family tree. Still, the moral survives the mathematics: thousands of human journeys, migrations, quarrels, reconciliations, harvests, heartbreaks and stubborn acts of hope converged so that each of us could arrive here.

Imagine surviving all that history only for your descendant to inherit a country where an institution can allegedly appear from bureaucratic mist, acquire official-looking stationery, enter government offices, obtain accounting recognition, open Central Bank accounts and stroll into the national budget wearing a presidential name tag.

That is the dark comedy of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, variously described in official and media accounts as PFIPC, PEAC/PFIPC and, in some reports, the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council. The Presidency insists that the body was never legally created, possessed no presidential approval and had no foundation in any law or executive instrument. Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who presented himself as its Director-General, has been charged with offences including forgery, impersonation and operating a fictitious government agency. He denies wrongdoing and maintains that the courts should determine the truth.

Ordinarily, that should be the whole story: somebody allegedly forged documents, the security agencies caught him, and the judicial machinery began turning.

But Nigeria will never serve you an ordinary meal.
Documents reviewed by investigators and journalists indicate that correspondence associated with the organisation moved through the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Office of the Accountant-General and the Central Bank. The organisation reportedly received self-accounting status, a budget code, office accommodation and two foreign-currency accounts. It interacted with senior officials and members of the diplomatic community before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought clarification about its legitimacy.

This transforms the matter from a possible case of one audacious impersonator into a national audit of institutional susceptibility. The central question is not merely, “Who is Adeyemi?” It is also, “What kind of administrative system can be persuaded to recognise an organisation that, according to the Presidency, never existed?”

A ghost may frighten one civil servant. But when the ghost obtains office space, a budget code and domiciliary accounts, it has stopped haunting the building. It has joined the civil service.

PFIPC reportedly appeared alongside the Presidential Economic Advisory Council in the 2026 Appropriation Act, with about ₦1.3 billion allocated to the disputed entity. The Budget Office has since stated that although the appropriation appeared in the budget, no money was released because expenditure controls prevented the allocation from becoming actual public spending. That distinction matters. Appropriation is legal permission to spend, not proof that spending occurred. Yet the absence of financial loss does not erase the governance failure that allowed a questionable body to travel so far through the state’s verification corridors.

A burglar who reaches the vault but finds the final lock intact has not proved that the entire security system is excellent. He has proved that the last padlock deserves a medal while the other doors require urgent counselling.

The controversy widened when Adeyemi accused the President’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, of corruption, bribery and involvement in the disputed council. Gbajabiamila has emphatically denied the allegations and instituted a ₦15 billion defamation action. Adeyemi has also demanded an independent investigation. These claims remain allegations and should not be converted into conclusions by social-media enthusiasm, partisan loyalty or the Nigerian habit of appointing ourselves judge immediately after reading three WhatsApp broadcasts.

President Bola Tinubu directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission to investigate the entire affair and submit a report within thirty days. Gbajabiamila subsequently appeared before the commission. The House of Representatives also constituted an ad hoc committee, although its hearings have already encountered the familiar national sport of invited officials sending representatives, explanations or atmospheric silence. The Senate, meanwhile, twice declined to open a separate investigation, citing the pending court case and the ICPC inquiry.

Every relevant institution deserves a fair hearing. But fairness must not become fog. The investigation must establish who prepared the documents, who authenticated them, who authorised the budget code, who initiated the appropriation, who processed the bank accounts, who allocated or permitted the use of office space, who recruited personnel, who received warnings and why public clarification took so long.

This is where Nigeria’s most dependable accomplice enters: collective amnesia.

Our scandals arrive as blockbuster cinema. For seventy-two hours, everyone becomes a forensic accountant. Television panels ignite. Hashtags reproduce. Party spokespersons perform verbal acrobatics. Then another drama lands: a minister quarrels with a governor, a celebrity marries during breakfast and divorces before evening, or somebody’s microphone develops political opinions. The previous scandal is quietly escorted into the national warehouse of unfinished outrage.

We confuse attention with accountability. They are not twins.

Attention asks, “Have you heard?”
Accountability asks, “What happened next?”

Democratic vigilance requires institutional memory: published timelines, accessible documents, named responsible officers, fixed reporting deadlines and consequences for obstruction, negligence or wrongdoing. Citizens and journalists should track the ICPC’s thirty-day deadline, the House committee’s findings, the criminal proceedings, the defamation case and every administrative reform promised afterward. Civil-society organisations should maintain a public PFIPC accountability dashboard until each question is answered.

The government should establish a single authoritative digital register of all federal ministries, departments, agencies, councils and presidential committees. Every entity should have a verifiable establishment instrument, leadership record, budget code, supervising authority and official domain. No agency should receive accounting status, office accommodation, recruitment approval or a bank account until its existence has been digitally authenticated across the relevant institutions. The #FixPolitics Initiative has similarly called for such a unified register.

Our ancestors did not endure wars, disease, displacement and impossible journeys merely to produce citizens with the attention span of a disappearing Instagram story. The 4,094 ancestral positions behind each of us represent accumulated survival. We owe that inheritance more than temporary indignation.

PFIPC must not become another national folktale beginning with “Once upon a scandal” and ending with “Nigerians moved on.”

This time, we must remain at the scene after the cameras leave. We must demand the reports, examine the evidence, distinguish accusation from proof, punish wrongdoing, correct institutional failures and record the lessons.

Otherwise, our ancestors may be forced to constitute their own ad hoc committee. And judging by their numerical strength, quorum will not be a problem.—May Nigeria win