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The House of Representatives formed the committee this week to examine the inclusion of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council in the 2026 Appropriation Act, a development first highlighted by the transparency group BudgIT and later reported across multiple Nigerian outlets including Premium Times and Punch Newspapers. Lawmakers expressed concern that the council, which the presidency has declared non-existent, nevertheless received the funding line under the presidency alongside the Presidential Economic Advisory Council. The allocation breaks down to N800 million for personnel costs and N200 million for capital projects, according to a review of the budget document published by Premium Times.
Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who presented himself as the council’s director general, operated the entity from an office in the Federal Secretariat in Abuja throughout much of 2025, where civil servants were assigned and the group maintained a website on the official .gov.ng domain before it was taken down, the BBC reported. Adeyemi met with cabinet ministers, financial regulators and foreign diplomats while claiming the body aimed to attract foreign investment, according to his recent statements to local media. He has denied preparing or defending the budget that appeared in the 2026 framework and said he was in detention when it was inserted, Premium Times reported.
The presidency announced last year that the council had no legal basis and rested on a forged appointment letter bearing the signature of Femi Gbajabiamila, President Bola Tinubu’s chief of staff, according to a statement by presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga. President Tinubu directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission to investigate within 30 days the role of any public officers involved, the BBC reported. No public funds were released to the council, the accountant-general’s office stated after initial claims that an account had been fraudulently opened at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Adeyemi faces an eight-count charge of forgery and impersonation after his court appearance in November 2025, according to Premium Times, and has vowed to cooperate with the ICPC probe while insisting the agency was established lawfully in 2024 out of passion to promote investment. He has accused unnamed officials of demanding bribes and questioned how a supposedly fake body could appear in the signed national budget, as quoted in reports by PM News and Daily Post. His lawyer Femi Falana previously told the BBC that higher officials who may have facilitated the operation should be exposed rather than placing responsibility on one individual.
BudgIT co-founder Oluseun Onigbinde told the BBC that the council did not feature in budgets for 2023, 2024 or 2025 before emerging fully formed with its own code in 2026, indicating it originated from the executive branch rather than parliament. A 2012 official review had recommended reducing Nigeria’s agencies but their number has since roughly doubled to well over 1,200, contributing to waste, according to the same transparency assessment. BudgIT has separately estimated that more than $550 billion has been lost to corruption in Nigeria since independence, a figure cited in the group’s June 2026 analysis of anti-corruption coordination failures.
Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index placed Nigeria at a score of 26 out of 100, ranking it 142 out of 182 countries with no change from the prior year, the anti-graft body reported on its website. The scandal has prompted additional scrutiny from opposition figures and civil society calling for an independent judicial inquiry beyond the ICPC process, according to coverage in The Guardian. Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu revealed he was deceived by documents on presidency letterhead, as reported by Punch Newspapers, underscoring questions over how the entity navigated approvals from the budget office, civil service and National Assembly.
