PFIPC scandal is pure scam— Presidency

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, has said a missing telephone number on a State House letterhead exposed the forged appointment letter used to run a fake federal agency from the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja.

He said the genuine letterhead carries no such number, unlike the one brandished by Adeniyi Adeyemi, the man at the centre of the scandal.Ajayi disclosed this during an interview on Arise Television on Friday, while addressing the controversy surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, an entity the Presidency has since disowned.

“On the genuine State House letterhead, there is no contact telephone number. On the purported appointment letter, however, there is one,” Ajayi said.

He said anybody familiar with how the Presidency operates would immediately spot the discrepancy.

“So anybody who understands how the system works will know this is a pure scam and a forged document,” he said.

Ajayi insisted that presidential appointments do not originate from the office of the Chief of Staff.

“You have been covering the State House for a number of years, and we all know that the Chief of Staff does not make appointments. It is the President who makes appointments into agencies or extra-ministerial positions,” he said.

He explained that the Chief of Staff’s role was limited to conveying the President’s approval to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who then issues the appointment letter to the successful candidate.

“What the Chief of Staff does is convey the President’s approval to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, informing them that the President has approved or made a particular appointment. It is the office of the SGF that issues the appointment letter to appointees,” he said.

Ajayi said it was procedurally wrong for anyone to brandish a letter of appointment purportedly originating directly from the Chief of Staff’s office.

“So, procedurally, it is even wrong for anyone to go about brandishing a letter of appointment originating from the office of the Chief of Staff. That is the first red flag,” he said.

Asked whether internal collaborators may have helped Adeyemi operate inside government institutions, Ajayi did not rule it out.

“Well, it’s not impossible, because even the audacity to go and operate inside the government’s federal secretariat is enough to suggest that something could have gone wrong at some point,” he said.

Adeyemi is facing an eight-count charge bordering on conspiracy, forgery and impersonation before the Federal High Court, Abuja, alongside two others identified as Femi and Anu, who are said to be at large.

He was arrested on October 27, 2025, at his office in the Federal Secretariat Complex after a petition to the Department of State Services and the police over the scheme.

The PidomNigeria had earlier reported that the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation forwarded a November 2024 request by Adeyemi for office accommodation for the council to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for processing from recovered government properties.

Adeyemi has continued to insist his appointment was genuine, telling Channels Television in a phone interview that he was not evading the law and was prepared to face trial.

He has separately accused the Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, of demanding 48 per cent of the council’s take-off grant, an allegation Gbajabiamila denies, and claimed he paid N400m to secure his appointment, with a balance of N200m still being demanded.

Investigators had earlier disclosed that Adeyemi operated 34 bank accounts linked to non-existent government bodies. The case is scheduled to continue on July 27, 2026.

Background

Ajayi had earlier accused Adeyemi, in a post on his X handle, of being an “irredeemable con artist” exploiting Nigerians’ sensitivity to corruption to shield himself by dragging Gbajabiamila into the scandal.

He said the DSS, police and EFCC had been tasked with unravelling how internal collaborators helped Adeyemi forge appointment letters, operate 34 fictitious bank accounts and host foreign ambassadors while posing as director-general of the non-existent council.

Gbajabiamila had, on June 11, publicly disclaimed the council, saying it had no official standing. Presidential aide Bayo Onanuga later disclosed that a key witness in the case died in a hotel fire five days before Adeyemi’s arrest.

Human rights lawyer Femi Falana has faulted the Presidency for lacking the constitutional power to exonerate any party, demanding an independent ICPC probe into both Gbajabiamila and Adeyemi, and an explanation for the N24bn budgeted for the non-existent agency.