ICPC: A verdict against one man, silence for the system

By Sonala Olumhense,

 Three weeks ago, I argued that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission was not really investigating the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council; it was investigating itself.

The question I wrote was whether Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies could apply to the highest offices in the land the same rigour they routinely apply to clerks, contractors and Yahoo Boys, or whether they exist mainly to manage embarrassment on behalf of the government that funds and can dismiss them.

On August 6, ICPC chairman, Musa Aliyu, answered that question, briefing President Bola Tinubu exactly 30 days after his July 7 directive.

The interim report, as disclosed, does not refute my thesis. It confirms it.

What the report establishes is, on its own narrow terms, unremarkable: Adeyemi was never appointed by the Federal Government; PFIPC was never created by any law, executive order or valid instrument; his appointment letter and supporting documents were forged; and PFIPC had unlawfully appropriated the identity, and even the physical office, of the defunct Presidential Economic Advisory Council, having broken into locked premises to do so.

The commission also disclosed two further fictitious bodies traceable to Adeyemi. Most of this had previously been substantially established by the police.

The ICPC, in essence, squandered 30 days confirming what was already on the record and recommending prosecution for nobody but the man everyone already suspected.

It is what the report does not do that condemns it. Mr Aliyu told correspondents that the investigation had identified officials whose acts of “commission, omission and negligence” facilitated PFIPC’s operations, and that it had found collaborators associated with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Head of the Civil Service, the Accountant-General’s office and the Budget Office. Yet the commission’s recommendation for these officials, as is usually the case, is not prosecution but “administrative sanctions.”

Now, compare that with Adeyemi’s lawyers’ own account of what it actually took to get PFIPC into the 2026 budget: a budget code from the Accountant-General’s office, self-accounting status, 314 recruitment waivers from the Head of Service, sign-off from the Budget Office and the National Assembly, and a plaque of recognition and a N300 million “processing consideration” request from the EFCC. If even half of that is true, this was not the work of an unassisted forger. It was institutional capture. Yet only the forger is being tried.

ICPC leans heavily on one line of comfort: that “no Federal Government funds were approved or disbursed” to PFIPC, as something close to vindication. It is nothing of the sort:

• A N1.3 billion line survived into a signed Appropriation Act.
• Three hundred and fourteen jobs were cleared for hiring during an official recruitment freeze.
• Seven federal number plates were issued by the FRSC on the strength of PFIPC’s letterhead.
• Foreign-currency accounts were opened at the Central Bank. D
• Diplomats and cabinet officials sat in meetings with a man impersonating a federal agency.

None of that required even one naira to move to constitute a profound breach of state integrity. Measuring this scandal by whether cash changed hands is like measuring whether a crashed commercial aircraft was registered.

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