Unanswered Questions As Presidency Clears Tinubu Aide Gbajabiamila In N600m Bribe-For-Job Scandal, But Silent On N1.3bn Provision For Appointee Adeyemi’s ‘Phantom’ Agency In 2026 Budget
The Presidency has cleared Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, of wrongdoing over the purported appointment of Adeniyi Adeyemi as the head of the “phantom” Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, while maintaining silence on the N1.3 billion allocated to the agency in the nation’s 2026 budget.
Adeyemi claims he paid Gbajabiamila N400 million to secure the job of CEO for the council, an entity which Gbajabiamila and The Presidency have said does not exist.
However, checks show the council got an allocation of N1.3 billion in the national budget for this year.
In its response to the controversy on Wednesday night, The Presidency issued a statement to clear Gbajabiamila of the allegations leveled against him.
However, the statement signed by Bayo Onanuga, maintained silence on how the allocation for the agency found its way into the budget.
The council was captured on pages 50 and 51 of the 2026 budget with an allocation of N1,302,978,784.
N1,002,978,784 was set aside for recurrent expenditure and N300,000,000 for capital expenditure.
Some of the council’s budget line items include: salary, N573,260,187; allowances and social contribution, N229,718,596; logistics for preparation of hosting World Investment Summit 2026, N182,500,000; strategic negotiation for investment professionals, N11,000,000 and negotiation and leadership N10,000,000.
The Presidency pointed out that Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, had issued a public disclaimer disowning the appointment of Adeniyi Adeyemi as the head of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
“It has come to the notice of the Federal Government of Nigeria and specifically the Office of the Chief of Staff to His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR that a certain Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, under the auspices of an alleged organisation styled as the ‘Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council’ is portraying himself to the general public as having been appointed by my office,” Gbajabiamila had said in the disclaimer.
The former Speaker of the House of Representatives said such an office “does not exist under President Tinubu’s government, and no appointment has been made in that regard.”
But while dismissing Gbajabiamila’s claim, Adeyemi accused the Chief of Staff of demanding N27,395,510,136 take-off grant of the agency, an allegation the former Speaker denied.
He also alleged that Gbajabiamila collected N400 million by proxy to secure him the appointment as the head of the agency, with a balance of N200 million still pending.
He further called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to investigate the matter with a view to getting to the root of the issues.
Adeyemi said the disputed council has a domiciliary account and a Treasury Single Account domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“Please note that the process of opening an account with the CBN starts from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation. Therefore, the CoS is telling the Accountant General of the Federation, his polls of directors, deputy directors, assistant directors and other professional experts in his office, that they are sit-down-look civil servants not to have detected forged documents.
“How did the agency get an office space at the Federal Secretariat and operate for over a year? These are not trivial matters but questions on the sensitivity of governance, accountability, and public trust,” he added.
Onanuga said the office of the Chief of Staff to the President first blew the whistle on the existence of the illegal agency, following complaints from officials of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council that another government agency appeared to be functioning at cross-purposes with it.
He further said the Chief of Staff, on October 17, in a letter, asked the DSS and the Police to probe the activities of ‘fraudsters and imposters’ forging appointment letters purportedly from his office.
The Presidential Spokesman said the letter to the security agencies was accompanied by a copy of “a forged appointment letter, a copy of the request for a note verbal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and pictures of engagements obtained from the illegal agency’s website.
“Around the time the Chief of Staff lodged the complaint with the security agencies, the existence of the fake agency had raised concerns within the Foreign Affairs Ministry.”
He explained that the police were able to establish that the agency Adeyemi purportedly headed was fictitious, that he forged his appointment letter and the documents recovered in his office and home, that he falsely paraded himself as a government appointee, and that he falsely solicited a note verbal from the Foreign Affairs Ministry to enable him and his staff to obtain US visas.
“The police also found that Adeyemi operated 34 bank accounts, with nine opened in the names of his fictitious agencies, known as the FCT Investment Promotion Agency and the Public Private Partnership (FIPA-APP), and the FCT Investment Promotion Act.
“The Police found that Adeyemi, using the fake documents he created, fraudulently opened a CBN account by misleading the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. According to the police, no government money has been transferred into the account.
“The act of the suspect constitutes criminal forgery, impersonation and obtaining by false pretence, thereby bringing the office of the Chief of Staff to the President and The Presidency to disrepute before the public and international community”, the police wrote in the report of the investigation conducted by the assistant commissioner, Kabir Mogaji.
He noted that based on their investigations, the police filed an eight-count charge at the Federal High Court in Abuja against Adeyemi and two of his accomplices on November 27, 2025, adding that he is due in court on July 27.
According to him, Adeyemi was on police bail when he recently claimed that the Chief of Staff had appointed him as DG of the fictitious agency.
Onanuga said he had a history of false presentation. “In November 2016, he paraded himself as an Ambassador and President-General of the World Youth Organisation (WYO), an affiliate of the United Nations (UN).
