A video featuring Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, the man accused in the alleged ₦1.3 billion “ghost agency” scandal, resurfaced on social media on Monday, drawing renewed attention to the controversy surrounding the purported government body.
The footage was recorded during a press conference held in late June 2026, where Adeyemi defended his claim as head of the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council and disputed the position taken by the Presidency and the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila.
During the briefing, Adeyemi challenged the Presidency’s insistence that the council never existed, arguing that its appearance in official budget documents contradicted that claim.
According to him, “the national budget does not emerge in isolation. It passes through multiple layers of technical drafting, executive coordination, ministerial inputs, Budget Office review, and finally legislative scrutiny by both chambers of the National Assembly.”
He maintained that if the agency was truly fictitious, its inclusion in government budget records raised serious concerns about the credibility of the budgeting process.
“The question becomes unavoidable: At what point in this process did references to a non-existent agency allegedly enter the official record? And if they are indeed present in official documentation, what does that imply about the integrity of the process that produced and approved those documents?” he asked.
Adeyemi further alleged that the council operated multiple accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“The same acclaimed non-existent agency has a domiciliary account, a pounds sterling account and a Treasury Single Account, all domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Is it even possible to open an account with fictitious documents in a commercial bank in Nigeria today, let alone the Central Bank of Nigeria?” he said.
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He also accused the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, of requesting 48 per cent of the council’s proposed ₦27.4 billion take-off grant, claiming the demand amounted to ₦12.5 billion.
The Presidency has repeatedly dismissed the allegations, insisting that the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council has no legal status and was never created by the Federal Government.
According to the Office of the Chief of Staff, Adeyemi allegedly forged official documents, including appointment letters carrying the names and signatures of senior government officials, in a bid to present himself as the Director-General of the purported council.
Authorities further alleged that he operated from an office located within Phase III of the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja, where he reportedly held meetings with government officials, diplomats, foreign investors and members of the public while posing as a senior government official.
Public attention intensified after reports showed that an entity listed in the 2026 Appropriation Act as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council received over ₦1.3 billion in budget allocations, despite the Presidency’s position that the body was fictitious.
The allocation reportedly consisted of about ₦803 million for personnel costs, ₦200 million for overhead expenses and ₦300 million for capital projects.
Adeyemi is currently standing trial before the Federal High Court in Abuja on an eight-count charge bordering on forgery, impersonation, false personation and operating a fictitious government agency.
While the Presidency has urged Nigerians to disregard Adeyemi’s claims, stressing that the matter is already before the court, Adeyemi has continued to deny being an impostor, maintaining that the judiciary will ultimately determine the case.
