Fresh drama has erupted in the alleged ₦1.3 billion ‘phantom’ council scandal as the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, accused the self-proclaimed Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), Adeniyi Adeyemi, of hijacking an official letter that could have exposed the alleged fraud from the outset.
Ogunjimi made the explosive revelation on Monday while testifying before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the controversial council and the ₦1.3 billion allocated to it in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The AGF told lawmakers that his office received what appeared to be a genuine request from the State House in November 2024, asking for an administrative code for the council to enable budgeting, accounting and financial reporting.
Believing the request came from the Presidency, the Office of the Accountant-General approved it and sent a reply to the State House on November 29, 2024, with a copy forwarded to the Budget Office.
But Ogunjimi claimed the letter never got to Aso Rock.
According to him, it was intercepted by Adeyemi, the man who had presented himself as the council’s Director-General.
“If our response had reached the State House, they would have immediately realised that they never wrote the letter requesting the administrative code,” Ogunjimi told the committee.
The AGF alleged that investigators later discovered the council’s promoters submitted forged documents, including what he described as a fake Act of the National Assembly and a fake appointment letter purportedly issued by the Presidency.
“What the fake agency did was to submit a fake Act, a fake appointment letter—everything presented to the Treasury was fake,” he said.
He explained that treasury officials processed the request because all the documents appeared authentic and seemed to have originated from the Presidency.
Ogunjimi also disclosed that two treasury officials had unknowingly ended up working with the alleged fake agency. He said the officers had originally been deployed years earlier to the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President, and the Treasury only discovered they had been absorbed into the controversial council after the scandal broke.
The controversy deepened after Adeyemi claimed that Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, personally appointed him as PFIPC Director-General—a claim firmly denied by the Presidency.
Adeyemi was arrested by operatives of the Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT) in Osun State on July 14 as investigations into the alleged fraud continue.
