TDMore details have come to light showing how Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, and others exploited an agency created by former President Muhamadu Buhari to siphon billions of Naira from public treasury.
Investigations have revealed that the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) is not a creation of President Tinubu.
The Presidential Economic Advisory Council was actually created by the late president.
It was established in September 2019 to replace the Economic Management Team then headed by Osinbajo.
It had Prof. Doyin Salami as chairman and eight economists, including Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo and Bismark Rewane as members.
All of them reported directly to the President with a defined mandate and a legal institutional identity.
On the hand, Tinubu’s economic body—PEAC was established in March 2024 and inaugurated in July 2024.
It had Tinubu himself as the chairman, with billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu, Senate President, Senator Godwsill Akpabio, and the Governors Forum Chairman, Governor Hope Uzodimma, as members.
Origins of the Phantom Agency and the Gbajabiamila Connection
Independent budget reviews have revealed that the PEAC and the PFIPC were not mere inventions of fraudster Prince Adeyemi.
According to analysts like Enitan Bello, the names appeared in Nigeria’s official budget documents as far back as the Buhari administration.
This suggests that the groundwork for this scandal was laid years before Tinubu came to power.
While the Presidency insists Adeyemi was a lone impostor, critics argue that the scandal implicates Gbajabiamila and other senior officials.
Adeyemi himself alleged that Gbajabiamila received ₦400 million in bribes, a claim the Presidency has denied but not backed with documentary evidence.
The fact that PFIPC managed to secure ₦1.3 billion in the 2026 budget raises serious questions.
Questions include who inserted the line item and how it passed through multiple layers of executive and legislative review without detection.
Exploiting the System
The phantom agency operated openly:
- Office space at the Federal Secretariat.
- Over 300 staff allegedly approved and paid.
- Recognition from ministries, the Budget Office, and even the National Assembly.
- A CBN account opened with forged documents.
- Meetings with ambassadors and foreign investors.
This was not a hidden fraud. It was a systemic exploitation of Nigeria’s bureaucratic weaknesses.
Institutional Failure or Collusion?
The scandal exposes glaring failures across multiple institutions:
- Budget Office: Approved codes for a non-existent agency.
- Civil Service Commission: Signed off on staff recruitment.
- CBN: Allowed account openings without proper verification.
- National Assembly: Passed the budget line item without scrutiny.
- Foreign Affairs Ministry: Allowed Adeyemi to host ambassadors.
Whether this was incompetence or collusion remains unanswered.
The Bigger Picture and Conclusions
Enitan Bello’s findings suggest that PFIPC’s roots go back to Buhari’s administration, meaning this was not just Adeyemi’s scam.
Rather, it was a long-running institutional failure that Tinubu’s government inherited and failed to detect.
The PFIPC scandal is more than the story of one fraudster.
It is a national embarrassment that implicates Nigeria’s highest offices.
The government need to provide documentary evidence of:
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how this phantom agency entered the budget,
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who signed off on its operations, and,
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whether insiders profited from it.
Until then, the scandal will remain a damning indictment of both Buhari’s and Tinubu’s administrations.
This is not just about Adeyemi.
It is about a government machinery that allowed billions to be siphoned under the guise of a phantom agency.
