Nigeria’s media space has been excited in the past two weeks

Nigeria’s media space has been excited in the past two weeks. This is courtesy of two lurid controversies that verge on the scandalous and surreal, and which seized its upper reaches in near seismic proportion.

The first saga is the convoluted one of a pseudo government agency – the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC). Though this “fictitious” PFIPC, helmed by a “Director-General” in the person of Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, is not known to law, it boasted, until recently, of a well-appointed office space at the Federal Secretariat.

The “fake” PFIPC was allocated a handsome sum of N1.3 billion in the 2026 budget. It reportedly secured an approval to employ 300 members of staff.

In a country where the opening of a corporate account is an uphill task, subject to several vagaries and vetting, including that of the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering (SCUML), this bogus council was said to have multiple bank accounts, including with the country’s Central Bank.

What is intriguing and salacious is that Prince Adeyemi had alleged that he had paid a N400 million bribe to Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff (COS) to President Bola Tinubu, through proxies, in lieu of his appointment as “Director-General.”

More intriguing is that after the chief of staff had disclaimed Prince Adeyemi in a statement issued by Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, in which he referenced Prince Adeyemi as a “con-artist”, a manhunt began in earnest for the Prince, who has since gone underground. In a move that reeks of desperation, the police on Monday reportedly raided the family residence of Prince Adeyemi in Ogbomoso, Oyo State. They were said to have arrested his father and a family friend who came visiting.

The ease with which Prince Adeyemi was said to have secured visas for foreign junkets, organised investment summits, summoned members of the diplomatic corps to a meeting and appropriated the statutory duties of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), speaks clearly, not only to a character taken out of an Agatha Christie novel, but to the fact that he was enabled.

The second controversy concerns the disclosure by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) resident representative, Christian Ebeke. At a meeting on Wednesday last week with business executives in Lagos, Ebeke had said that Nigeria omitted N8.8 trillion spending worth 2 per cent of its gross domestic product from its recent budgets.

He explained that this non-reporting had made Nigeria’s fiscal deficit to appear lower than its true borrowing requirements as some capital expenditures were excluded from budget documents and implementation reports.

This unreported spending was largely tied to major government projects executed outside the budget framework, thereby making it more difficult to accurately assess the country’s fiscal position and the scale of public investment.

Ebeke emphasised that greater transparency was critical to strengthening public financial management. He warned that off-budget spending raised concerns over procurement practices, accountability and oversight.

The two controversies – the one ignited by Prince Adeyemi’s alleged shenanigans and IMF’s chastisement – intersect. They meet at the point of transparency or the abject lack of it.

If we had guardrails and vigorous checks, and if we had persons of integrity manning our gates at the Presidency, the office of the Chief of Staff, Secretary to the Government, Accountant-General, the National Assembly and the Central Bank, certainly, Prince Adeyemi’s alleged “con-artistry” would have been detected in advance of the scandal it spawned.

Thankfully, before the shit hit the fan (pardon my language) and besmeared whatever little that is left of the government’s reputation, the president has directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to investigate the circumstances that led to the scandal.

But even such an intervention, welcome as it is, to salvage the vestiges of the government’s integrity, must elicit for Nigerians a sad feeling of deja vu.

Following her alleged diversion of N582.2 million, the former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, came under investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Two years after, she was suspended from office. The EFCC is still investigating! This may, thus be another investigation that will lead to nowhere.

It is not helpful that on the same day the president announced his directive to the ICPC to do a comprehensive investigation of the PFIPC saga, he inaugurated the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill to be chaired by Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila; neither is the hounding of the family of Prince Adeyemi, whose members may not be complicit in his alleged (mis)adventures.

If one has misgivings about the impartiality of the ICPC in this investigation or the seriousness of this government to unravel what happened, one must express bewilderment at the reaction of the government to its rebuke by the IMF.

On the occasions that the IMF praised the government for its “bold” reforms and the management of the economy, it had not only latched onto such praises, it unabashedly celebrated them.

Meanwhile, on the three major occasions in which the IMF had criticised its handling of the economy or expressed the view that its reforms were not impacting positively on ordinary folks, the government had not only gone apoplectic, it had reacted with extreme anger and fury. Witness its recent pushback in which the IMF’s criticism was either “strongly” rejected or “dismissed” outright.

Fury notwithstanding, the facts are inviolable and notorious. Not only is the government implementing the 2024 budget in 2026, its less than detailed reporting goes against the grain of international best practices and accounting standards.

An incomplete financial report cannot, by any means, give a full, robust and comprehensive picture of the state of our affairs or finances.  It can only obscure it. And in a situation where opacity is preferred over transparency and clarity, fuel is provided to speculations, real or imagined, either of manipulation or wrong doing.

This is more so in the context where ghastly sums were allegedly shelled to opposition politicians to defect to the ruling party and when general elections await.

Dazang is a former director in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

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