The alleged fake Director-General of Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) Adeniyi Adeyemi was no where near the House of Reps panel set up to probe the controversial agency even as it rounds off public session, Wednesday.
The panel had mandated the Police IG to present Adeyemi at the panel’s sitting.
However, more startling revelations were revealed on the final day of the public hearing.
The panel heard how Adeyemi personally collected a memo addressed to the Permanent Secretary, State House, from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF).
The House panel chairman, Yusuf Gagdi, revealed how the fake agency secured a budget line in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
According to him, investigations showed that a non-existent office was used to obtain the administrative code that later paved the way for the council’s appearance in the Federal Government budget.
He added that Nigerians had wrongly accused both the State House and the National Assembly of inserting the agency into the Appropriation Act when evidence suggested that forged documents had manipulated administrative procedures across several government institutions.
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Gagdi spoke after the testimony of a former Director of Consolidated Accounts in the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Joshua Luka, now Director of the Federal Projects/Financial Management Department.
Luka told the committee that his office acted on what appeared to be a legitimate request from the State House seeking an administrative code for the council.
According to him, the request was signed “for Permanent Secretary” by one Akanbi Adewale, who identified himself as Director of Administration and Support Services.
Luka explained that after processing the request, his office deliberately addressed its response conveying the administrative code to the Permanent Secretary, State House, rather than directly to the purported agency.
He said this was a deliberate safeguard built into the civil service system.
“As part of our due diligence, what we did was to convey the administrative code to the Permanent Secretary, State House, and not to the so-called agency,” he told lawmakers.
He explained that if the request had not genuinely originated from the State House, the Permanent Secretary would immediately detect the fraud.
“The idea behind this was that if it was not from there, the whole thing would have been unravelled. That is the normal thing done in the service,” he added.
The hearing took a dramatic turn when lawmakers sought to establish how a letter addressed to the Permanent Secretary, State House, ended up in Adeyemi’s possession.
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Luka insisted that the correspondence was never intended for the purported council.
“The letter was addressed to the Permanent Secretary, State House, and it was supposed to be delivered there,” he said.
However, Adeyemi, posing as the Director-General of the agency, personally collected the letter from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
Luka explained that the Budget Office merely received an advance copy for information, stressing that under civil service procedures, such copies cannot be acted upon unless the original addressee initiates the process.
He further explained that shortly after signing the correspondence on December 2, 2024, he travelled to Tanzania with the Accountant-General and therefore did not supervise its delivery.
“The problem was the person who was supposed to deliver this letter, carrying a letter that was addressed to the Permanent Secretary, State House, and delivering it probably in Wuse Market,” he said.
When lawmakers demanded to know who handled the delivery, Luka identified an official of the Accountant-General’s Office, Mr. Bello.
Bello told the committee that government agencies usually collect official correspondence themselves.
According to him, Adeyemi personally visited the Accountant-General’s Office and collected the letter on behalf of the State House.
Gagdi described it as another major discovery in the investigation, saying the administrative code became the foundation upon which the purported council later secured a budgetary allocation.
He alleged that after obtaining the letter, Adeyemi forged another document purportedly issued by the non-existent Department of Administration and Support Services in the State House, acknowledging receipt of the administrative code before forwarding it to the Budget Office.
According to the chairman, the forged correspondence ultimately misled officials into processing budgetary provisions for the council.
While acknowledging that something had gone wrong, Luka insisted the failure was not systemic.
“What I’m saying is that the lapse here was not an office lapse. The letter was hijacked. It was an individual’s fault and not a system fault,” he said.
He maintained that the fraud would have been uncovered much earlier had the original correspondence reached the Permanent Secretary as intended.
Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, also returned before the committee to clarify issues relating to approvals granted to the council.
She reaffirmed that her office neither deployed staff to the PFIPC, allocated office accommodation to it, nor approved any organisational structure for it.
However, she gave a detailed explanation of how the Office processed requests for an authorised establishment and recruitment waiver.
According to her, ministries, departments and agencies seeking to recruit staff are required to present their manpower needs during annual manpower budget defence sessions before officials of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.
