How PFIPC recruitment waiver raises fresh questions for ‘non-existent’ agency

A fresh dimension has emerged in the raging controversy over the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), with documents showing that the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation formally approved the recruitment of 300 personnel into the council, despite the Presidency’s insistence that the agency does not exist.

According to documents published by TheCable, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation issued a waiver on August 7, 2025, approving the recruitment of 300 staff for the PFIPC. The letter, signed by Mimi Abu, Director of Organisation Design and Development in the office, was required because the Federal Government had placed an embargo on general recruitment into the civil service, making the approval a special exemption rather than a routine process.

The waiver reportedly authorised the recruitment of 10 directors on Grade Level 17, 20 assistant directors on Grade Level 15, dozens of administrative officers across various grade levels, 45 planning officers, 32 commercial officers, 22 investment promotion officers, 26 accountants and 10 legal officers.

It also covered procurement officers, programme analysts, information officers, statisticians, technical officers, confidential secretaries, drivers and other categories of staff, bringing the total approved positions to 300.

The letter stated that the approval was based on and limited to the 2025 approved establishment position of the agency, language that referred to the PFIPC directly as an agency rather than as a purported or alleged body.

It also directed the council to obtain clearance from the Budget Office before recruitment, comply with the Federal Character principle, reserve five percent of the positions for persons living with disabilities, ensure that officials from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service monitored the exercise, and submit the names of successful candidates for official records.

Within 24 hours of the waiver being issued, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, who claims to be the council’s Director-General, publicly thanked President Bola Tinubu for what he described as government support for the agency.

He also announced that approval had been secured to establish PFIPC offices in all 36 states and to roll out 127 international offices, claims that have not been independently verified.

The PFIPC controversy dates back to October 2025, when the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, petitioned the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force over individuals allegedly forging appointment letters from his office to claim leadership of non-existent government entities, with particular reference to the PFIPC.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had separately raised concerns after Adeyemi convened a meeting with ambassadors at a hotel in Abuja that month without notifying the ministry.

Police arrested Adeyemi on October 27, 2025, and later filed an eight-count charge against him and two others, said to be at large, before the Federal High Court in Abuja on November 27, 2025, on charges including conspiracy, forgery of presidential appointment documents, forgery of official State House letterheads, and impersonation of a Director-General.

The Presidency alleged that investigators traced 34 bank accounts linked to Adeyemi, including some opened in the names of other purported government bodies, and that he used forged documents to fraudulently open an account with the Central Bank of Nigeria, though no government funds were found to have been transferred into it.

Adeyemi has denied the allegations and insists he was validly appointed, maintaining that the matter should be resolved in court, where his case is scheduled to resume on July 27, 2026.

On June 11, 2026, Gbajabiamila issued a public disclaimer describing the PFIPC as fictitious and warning Nigerians against dealing with anyone claiming to represent it.

Adeyemi responded with a press conference alleging that Gbajabiamila received N400 million through a proxy and demanded an additional N200 million, along with 48 percent of the council’s N27.4 billion take-off grant, to secure his appointment, an allegation the Presidency has rejected. He also called for an independent panel to investigate the death of one Dolapo Tanimola, an alleged intermediary in the matter whom police said died in a hotel fire days before Adeyemi’s arrest.

The dispute deepened further after it emerged that the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council was listed in the 2026 Appropriation Act with a total allocation of N1.3 billion, comprising N802,978,783 for personnel costs, N200,000,001 for overhead and N300 million for capital projects.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has since called the episode evidence of a government held hostage by fraudsters operating within its own institutions, questioning how a supposedly fictitious agency secured a budget line, survived National Assembly scrutiny and, now, a civil service recruitment waiver.