By Luminous Jannamike
ABUJA – The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has dismissed the interim report of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on the alleged fake Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), saying it failed to explain how a fictitious agency gained access to the machinery of government.
For the opposition party, the bigger question is not simply how one man allegedly posed as a government official, but how the supposed fake agency got office space at the Federal Secretariat, civil servants, official vehicles, armed security and a N1.3 billion provision in the 2026 budget.
In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC said the ICPC report was predictable and appeared more interested in damage control and exonerating government officials than in answering the questions thrown up by the scandal.
“The ICPC report appeared to have given the impression that what happened was mere failure in government processes or procedures. This position is difficult to sustain in the light of publicly available evidence,” Abdullahi said.
The party said the alleged PFIPC was not created by Nigerian law or any legitimate executive approval, yet managed to secure the institutional backing required to operate as though it were a government agency.
It took particular exception to the ICPC’s recommendation that Adeyemi be prosecuted while suggesting that there could be other accomplices within government without identifying any.
“If all that the commission had to present was a preliminary report, why not simply present it as confidential brief to the President instead of making a public drama of it in a manner that potentially prejudiced the overall investigation and cast Adeyemi as the principal culprit?” the ADC asked.
The party said the N1.3 billion reportedly provided for PFIPC in the 2026 Appropriation Act was a key issue requiring explanation.
It said the National Assembly had already commenced an investigation into how the allocation found its way into the budget, insisting that the process should reveal who proposed the provision, who processed it and who verified the agency that was supposed to receive the money.
“Budgetary provisions do not materialise by accident. They leave records, submissions, approvals and an audit trail,” the ADC said.
The party also questioned how PFIPC secured accommodation within the Federal Secretariat and how civil servants were deployed to an organisation the Presidency now says never existed.
“To prosecute Mr. Adeyemi without answering these questions would be to punish the man who entered through the window while refusing to ask who left the doors open,” the ADC said.
It also raised the issue of a purported appointment letter bearing the signature of the Chief of Staff to the President, which investigators reportedly found to have been forged.
The ADC said establishing that the signature was forged only addressed the beginning of the alleged deception, not how the document passed through subsequent layers of government verification.
“A forgery may explain the first door that was opened. It cannot explain why every subsequent door appears to have opened as well,” the party stated.
The ADC said the reported discovery by the ICPC of two other fictitious organisations allegedly linked to Adeyemi should have expanded the investigation rather than narrowed its focus to one suspect.
It said the development raised questions about how the administration’s systems allowed such organisations to acquire what appeared to be official legitimacy.
The party recalled that when President Bola Tinubu directed the ICPC to investigate the matter, it had instead called for a full investigation by an independent panel, arguing that an agency of government could not adequately probe a scandal involving government institutions.
“What has happened is a national disgrace in the full glare of the entire world. No serious government should be satisfied with identifying one culprit for prosecution,” the ADC said.
It demanded the immediate publication of the full ICPC interim report and called for every public official whose actions or negligence enabled the alleged fictitious organisations to obtain official legitimacy to be identified and held accountable where wrongdoing is established.
The party said Nigerians were not asking the government to manufacture culprits, but to follow the evidence wherever it leads, warning that anything less would amount to an exercise aimed at containing the embarrassment rather than uncovering the truth.
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