By Suad Ayinla
Edited by Bababunmi Agbebi
Some scams get discovered because the con artist gets greedy. This one may have unraveled because Nigeria’s own budget office apparently forgot to check whether the agency it was funding was real.
A fresh controversy has erupted around a man identified as Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who is now facing an eight-count criminal charge for allegedly building one of the most audacious impersonation schemes in recent Nigerian memory: inventing a government agency out of thin air, naming himself its Director-General, and operating it with enough confidence that he secured office space at the Federal Secretariat, a Central Bank account, meetings with foreign ambassadors, and most remarkably a line item worth roughly ₦1.3 billion in Nigeria’s actual, signed-into-law 2026 federal budget.
According to a detailed statement released by presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, the scheme first drew scrutiny when officials at the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission complained that another body appeared to be operating at cross-purposes with them. Onanuga further stated that On October 10, 2025, Adeyemi reportedly convened a meeting with foreign ambassadors at the Wells Carlton Hotel in Abuja without involving Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs a breach of standard diplomatic procedure that set off internal government inquiries. A week later, on October 17, Chief of Staff to the President Femi Gbajabiamila formally petitioned the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force to investigate what he called “fraudsters and imposters” forging appointment letters from his office.
Despite the Presidency insisting repeatedly, and in writing that the PFIPC does not exist, a review of the Budget Office’s published 2026 Appropriation Bill shows an entry under the Presidency, listed as “Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council,” carrying the budget code 0111062001 and a total allocation of ₦1.303 billion. That breaks down into roughly ₦802.98 million for personnel costs, ₦200 million for overhead, and ₦300 million in capital expenditure funding that moved through the full federal appropriations pipeline: drafting, National Assembly passage, and the President’s signature on April 17, 2026.
In other words: a government the Presidency says never recognized this agency somehow processed its personnel budget, overhead, and capital projects through an entire national budget cycle without anyone catching it. As of this week, neither the Presidency nor the Budget Office had offered a public explanation for how that happened.
The case has raised questions about budget discipline, internal checks, and how a fake agency could appear to have government backing. It also suggests the failure may extend beyond the alleged impersonator to the institutions that allowed the arrangement to continue.
The bigger issue is the gap between paperwork, budgeting, and oversight. For many Nigerians, it has become another example of how weak controls can let official-looking scams survive across the system.
The full extent of the matter will depend on what investigators and the court ultimately establish, but the allegations already combine impersonation, alleged document fraud, and a budget irregularity that federal officials have yet to explain all inside one sweeping case.
Adeyemi’s trial is scheduled to resume on July 27. Whether anyone in government is ever held accountable for how this fictitious council made it into a signed national appropriations act may end up being the more consequential question.
