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Prince Charles Dickson, PhD
To produce a living Nigerian today, biology requires a spectacular ancestral relay. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on, doubling backwards until the arithmetic reaches 2,048 ancestors in the previous eleventh generation. Added together, the generations listed add up to 4,094 ancestral positions.
Strictly speaking, the popular calculation describes eleven generations, not twelve, and probably extends over about three centuries rather than one hundred years.
Family tree collapse also means that some ancestors may occupy more than one position in the family tree. Yet, morality outlives mathematics: thousands of human journeys, migrations, arguments, reconciliations, harvests, heartbreaks, and willful acts of hope have converged so that each of us could get here.
Imagine surviving all that history only for your descendants to inherit a country in which an institution can supposedly emerge from the bureaucratic fog, acquire official-looking stationery, enter government offices, gain accounting recognition, open Central Bank accounts, and enter the national budget wearing a presidential name tag.
This is the black comedy of the Presidential Council for the Promotion of Foreign Intervention, variously described in official reports and the media as PFIPC, PEAC/PFIPC and, in some reports, Presidential Council for the Promotion of Foreign Investment. The Presidency insists that the body was never legally created, did not have presidential approval and had no basis in any law or executive instrument.
Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who presented himself as director general, was charged with offenses including forgery, identity theft and running a fictitious government agency. He denies wrongdoing and says courts should determine the truth.
Usually, the story would be all this: someone allegedly forged documents, security agencies caught him and the legal machinery started rolling.
But Nigeria will never serve you a normal meal.
Documents examined by investigators and journalists indicate that correspondence associated with the organization passed through the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Office of the Accountant General and the Central Bank.
The organization has reportedly received self-accounting status, a budget code, office accommodation and two foreign currency accounts. He interacted with senior officials and members of the diplomatic community before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought clarification on his legitimacy.
This transforms the issue from a possible case of a bold imitator into a national test of institutional susceptibility. The central question is not simply: “Who is Adeyemi?” It is also: “What kind of administrative system can be induced to recognize an organization that, according to the Presidency, never existed?”
A ghost can scare a public official. But when the ghost gets office space, a budget code and house accounts, he stopped haunting the building. He joined the civil service.
The PFIPC reportedly appeared alongside the Presidential Economic Advisory Council in the Appropriation Bill of 2026, with approximately ₦1.3 billion allocated to the disputed entity. The Budget Office later stated that although the appropriation appeared in the budget, no money was released because spending controls prevented the appropriation from becoming a real government expense.
This distinction is important. Appropriation is legal permission to spend, not proof that spending occurred. However, the absence of financial losses does not erase the failure of governance that allowed a questionable body to travel so far through the state’s verification corridors.
A thief who arrives at the vault but finds the last lock intact has not demonstrated that the entire security system is excellent. It proved that the last lock deserves a medal while the other doors need urgent consultation.
The controversy widened when Adeyemi accused the president’s chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, of corruption, bribery and involvement in the disputed board. Gbajabiamila categorically denied the allegations and launched a ₦15 billion defamation action.
Adeyemi also called for an independent investigation. These statements remain accusations and should not be turned into conclusions by social media hype, partisan loyalty or the Nigerian habit of appointing himself a judge immediately after reading three WhatsApp broadcasts.
President Bola Tinubu has directed the Independent Commission on Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses to investigate the entire matter and submit a report within thirty days. Gbajabiamila subsequently appeared before the commission.
The House of Representatives has also formed an ad hoc committee, although its hearings have already encountered the familiar national sport of invited officials sending representatives, explanations or atmospheric silence. The Senate, meanwhile, has twice refused to open a separate investigation, citing the pending court case and the ICPC investigation.
Every relevant institution deserves a fair trial. But equity must not become fog. The investigation must establish who prepared the documents, who authenticated them, who authorized the budget code, who initiated the appropriation, who processed the bank accounts, who assigned or allowed the use of the offices, who recruited the staff, who received warnings and why public clarifications took so long.
This is where Nigeria’s most reliable accomplice comes in: collective amnesia.
Our scandals come like blockbuster movies. For seventy-two hours everyone becomes a forensic accountant. The television panels light up. Hashtags reproduce. Party spokesmen perform verbal acrobatics.
Then comes more drama: a minister argues with a governor, a celebrity gets married over breakfast and gets divorced before dark, or someone’s microphone develops political opinions. The previous scandal is quietly hidden in the national warehouse of unfinished indignation.
We confuse attention with responsibility. They are not twins.
Attention asks, “Did you hear?”
Accountability asks, “What happened next?”
Democratic oversight requires institutional memory: published timelines, accessible documents, appointed responsible officials, fixed reporting deadlines, and consequences for obstruction, negligence, or wrongdoing. Citizens and journalists should keep track of the ICPC’s thirty-day deadline, the House committee findings, the criminal proceedings, the defamation case, and any administrative reforms promised thereafter. Civil society organizations should maintain a public PFIPC accountability dashboard until each question is answered.
The government should establish a single authoritative digital registry of all federal ministries, departments, agencies, councils and presidential committees. Each entity should have a verifiable institutional instrument, a leadership record, a budget code, a supervisory authority and an official domain. No agency should receive accounting status, office accommodation, recruitment approval or a bank account until its existence has been digitally authenticated by the relevant institutions. Likewise, the #FixPolitics initiative called for a unified registry.
Our ancestors did not endure war, disease, displacement, and impossible travel just to produce citizens with the attention span of a vanishing Instagram story. The 4,094 ancestral positions behind each of us represent accumulated survival. We owe more to this legacy than temporary indignation.
The PFIPC must not become yet another national folktale that begins with “There was a scandal” and ends with “Nigerians have moved on”.
This time we have to stay on the scene after the cameras leave. We must demand reporting, examine evidence, distinguish accusations from evidence, punish wrongdoing, correct institutional failures, and record lessons.
Otherwise our ancestors might be forced to form their own ad hoc committee. And judging by their numerical strength, quorum won’t be a problem. May Nigeria win
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