By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress ADC, Atiku Abubakar, has declared that the Presidency’s attempt to explain away the scandal surrounding the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council PFIPC has exposed a government held hostage by fraudsters operating from within the very institutions established to protect the Nigerian state.
In a statement on Thursday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said the response by Presidential Spokesperson Bayo Onanuga was not a defence of the government but a public confession of institutional collapse.
“There is an African proverb which says that ‘the man who points at the moon should not have blood on his finger.’ A government cannot claim to be exposing fraud while simultaneously struggling to explain how that same fraud found its way into the very heart of the Nigerian state,” the statement read.
According to the former Vice President, what the Presidency intended as damage control has instead become self-indictment.
“Rather than extinguish the fire, it has illuminated how deeply the flames have consumed the foundations of governance,” he said, arguing that the official explanation asks Nigerians to believe that one private citizen single-handedly forged presidential documents, impersonated senior government officials, established an office inside the Federal Secretariat, opened dozens of bank accounts bearing government identities, hosted foreign ambassadors without diplomatic clearance and embedded a phantom agency into the machinery of government without any insider assistance. “That explanation demands far greater faith than the scandal itself,” he said.
Atiku described the scandal as exposing institutions hollowed out by years of negligence, incompetence and impunity, likening it to termites that consume a tree from within until “the first storm.”
He cited a glaring contradiction in the Presidency’s position, noting that while officials insist the PFIPC never existed, public records reportedly show that approximately ₦1.3 billion was appropriated for the council in the 2026 Appropriation Act, alongside the Presidential Economic Advisory Council.
“If the agency was fictitious, who prepared the budget estimates bearing its name? Which ministry submitted them? Which officials defended those estimates before the National Assembly? Which committees scrutinised them? Which lawmakers approved them? Who inserted the allocation into the Appropriation Bill? And ultimately, who signed that budget into law?” he asked.
He accused the National Assembly of legislative abdication for failing to detect the anomaly or demand explanations before an allegedly fictitious agency made its way into the national budget. He also questioned the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN over how the alleged agency navigated financial processes that ordinary businesses struggle to complete, and criticised the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC for what he called selective zeal in pursuing opposition figures while showing hesitation toward allegations touching the corridors of power. “Anti-corruption loses all credibility when it becomes selective prosecution,” he said.
Atiku maintained that regardless of whether the episode was an elaborate fraud aided by insiders or a catastrophic failure of governance, the conclusion remains that government failed. “A government that cannot protect the integrity of its own budget cannot be trusted with the destiny of over 200 million Nigerians,” he said.
While acknowledging that Prince Adeyemi may ultimately answer before the courts, Atiku insisted the Presidency could not prosecute one man while refusing to explain the institutional contradictions that made his alleged activities possible.
He described the scandal as having become “a metaphor for the President Bola Tinubu administration itself,” and demanded a truly independent investigation that follows the evidence wherever it leads, with no sacred cows, no political protection and no selective justice.
“The fictitious agency saga stands as yet another compelling reason why Nigerians must reject this administration and rescue their country from a government that has become a hostage to incompetence, institutional decay, and those who profit from both,” he said.
