The inclusion of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, an agency the presidency claimed did not exist, in the 2026 Appropriation Act, has questioned the integrity of Nigeria’s annual budgets and has also shown that the level of corruption in the country has gone beyond the era of ghost workers syndrome to an era of “ghost” government agency, Ejiofor Alike reports
Nigerians recently witnessed another drama, which further portrayed the country as unserious, with the discovery of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), a non-existent federal government agency in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The supposedly non-existent agency had operated from a physical office space at the Federal Secretariat, and maintained a Treasury Single Account (TSA) with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The Presidency itself confirmed that the agency operated 34 bank accounts, with nine opened in the names of the fictitious agencies, known as the FCT Investment Promotion Agency and the Public Private Partnership (FIPA-APP), and the FCT Investment Promotion Act.
The Presidency claimed that the director general of the agency, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, forged his appointment letter and all the documents he used to create and run the agency.
