African Democratic Congress, ADC, presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has issued President Bola Tinubu a seven-day ultimatum to order a seamless, holistic and independent investigation into the scandal rocking the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC.
In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the former Vice President warned that failure to do so would deepen public suspicion that powerful interests in government benefited from the alleged fraud.
He stated that the controversy had moved beyond ordinary forgery allegations into a full-blown crisis of institutional credibility, and that many Nigerians seeking public sector appointments may have been duped through a racket that enjoyed official protection.
According to him, the explanation offered by the Presidency through Bayo Onanuga did not add up and had left more questions than answers.
“President Tinubu has 7 days to address this scandal or risk complicity charges. If the government wants Nigerians to believe that one man single-handedly created an office for himself, secured office space within a government facility, held meetings with foreign embassy delegations, paid courtesy visits to the EFCC, processed staff salaries through official channels, allegedly operated institutional accounts, and carried on all these activities without the knowledge, approval, negligence or collaboration of anyone within government, then that narrative raises even more troubling questions than it answers,” he said.
The presidential candidate further stated that while Adeniyi Adeyemi, the man at the centre of the scandal, must face the law if he committed fraud, the more pressing question was what kind of government system allowed such an elaborate operation to pass through budgetary, administrative, security and institutional channels undetected.
Atiku argued that the accused’s antecedents could not explain away the institutional processes he reportedly navigated, asking whether it was his character that secured budgetary allocations for a supposedly fictitious office, or his antecedents that got him office space within a government facility, or his dubious nature that enabled him to hold meetings with foreign delegations, legislators and public officials.
