How Adeyemi exploited govt loopholes to build fake agency — ICPC

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission has disclosed how Adeniyi Matthew, the embattled former Director-General of the disowned Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, allegedly exploited weaknesses in Nigeria’s public sector systems to establish a fake agency and manipulate government processes.

The ICPC Chairman, Musa Aliyu, made the disclosure on Thursday in Abuja at the 4th Economic Confidential Lecture and National Spokesperson Award.

Aliyu said the case demonstrated how weak institutional controls could allow individuals to obtain questionable documents and move them through different government agencies without adequate verification.

He identified weak public sector systems and widespread tolerance of corrupt practices as major factors sustaining corruption in the country.

“Recently, we have seen what happened on the issue of the vacancy. The system is very, very big. That was why an individual, allegedly, was able to build the system and to get documents to pass through various agencies, and for the agencies to act without due diligence,” he said.

According to him, some documents presented to public officials should immediately trigger further scrutiny, but inadequate verification often allows suspicious records and transactions to pass through government processes.

Aliyu warned that such institutional weaknesses could undermine public confidence and discourage foreign investment.

He cited cases in which investors could legally acquire property only to discover that another person had obtained a competing title document for the same land.

“How can people not believe you? Why is the system not working?” he asked.

The ICPC chairman said similar loopholes had been exploited in the public payroll system, where investigations uncovered multiple cases of ghost workers and fraudulent employment records.

He disclosed that one individual allegedly enrolled 14 family members as government employees despite their not working in the offices where they were listed.

In another case, Aliyu said an individual enrolled his wife, daughter, son and in-law on the government payroll and was allegedly receiving 13 different salaries.

He also disclosed that a hotel had been listed as a public officer and was receiving government salary.

Aliyu said payroll fraud extended beyond salaries, as ghost workers could also generate fraudulent deductions for pensions, housing funds and health insurance.

He said the ICPC recovered more than N24bn linked to ghost workers’ pension-related funds in 2024 and obtained interim orders involving about 900 suspected ghost workers.

The commission also recovered more than N100m from accounts linked to suspected ghost workers, he said.

According to Aliyu, investigators found cases where the name of a supposed female employee was linked to a bank account belonging to a man, highlighting the extent of manipulation within payroll systems.

The ICPC chairman further disclosed that the commission had identified irregularities in budget and project implementation processes.

He said some government agencies had projects inserted into their budgets despite having no connection with the projects.

“You will see a stadium building inserted into an agency in the agricultural sector. I have seen where training of local barbers was put under empowerment in one of the agencies under the justice sector,” he said.

Aliyu said the commission had strengthened its system-study and project-monitoring interventions to ensure that appropriated funds were used for their intended purposes.

He said the ICPC had intervened in projects worth trillions of naira, compelling contractors to return to project sites, execute works according to approved designs or refund government funds.

According to him, funds recovered or saved through such interventions were close to N900bn during the period under review.

Aliyu stressed that preventing corruption was more effective than allowing public funds to be diverted before pursuing recovery.

“It is better to make the system strong and people will not be able to siphon the money than to allow the money to disappear, then we go after those who diverted the money,” he said.

He said the commission would increasingly focus on prevention, ethical rehabilitation, public engagement, recovery of proceeds of crime and enforcement.

Aliyu also called for early education on integrity, saying Nigeria could draw lessons from countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, which strengthened institutions while cultivating a culture of integrity.

He said the ICPC was restructuring its operations to focus on high-impact corruption cases involving areas such as ghost workers, constituency projects and other schemes with significant economic consequences.

“We will have cases that will have high impact, like this case of land, like the case of ghost workers, these are constituency projects. These are the cases that will have high impact on the Nigerian people,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of Economic Confidential, Yushau Shuaib, said anti-corruption reforms, economic stability and strategic communication were crucial to restoring public confidence in Nigerian institutions.

Shuaib said the annual lecture was established to promote transparency, accountability and effective communication in governance.

He also unveiled a research project titled “AI in Crisis Communication in Nigeria,” examining the growing role of artificial intelligence in crisis management and public communication.

Shuaib said the research had been shortlisted for the 2026 Golden World Awards in the categories of best application of AI and best campaign in AI crisis management.

He thanked stakeholders, partners, board members, media organisations and volunteers for supporting the organisation’s training, fellowship and research programmes aimed at promoting professionalism and integrity in public communication.