Trending 
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) of shielding government officials in its investigation into the controversial Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC).
In a statement issued on Saturday by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, the opposition party said the investigation should not end with the recommendation to prosecute Adeniyi Adeyemi, the council’s director-general.
The ADC described the ICPC’s interim report as inadequate, arguing that it failed to explain how an organisation the commission found to have no legal backing was able to operate within government structures.
The ICPC had on Thursday recommended Adeyemi’s prosecution after concluding that the PFIPC was not established by law and did not exist as a government agency.
The commission, however, cleared the Presidency and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of wrongdoing, while attributing the emergence of the council to institutional lapses across some ministries, departments and agencies.
The ADC said the report raised more questions than it answered, particularly over how the purportedly fictitious agency secured office space within the Federal Secretariat, had civil servants deployed to it and was allocated N1.3 billion in the 2026 budget.
The party recalled that President Bola Tinubu had directed the ICPC to investigate the matter but said it had initially called for an independent panel to conduct the probe.
According to the ADC, the interim report had reinforced its concerns that the investigation was being handled in a manner that could protect officials who may have enabled the alleged fraud.
“It would be recalled that when President Bola Tinubu directed the ICPC to undertake investigation into this case, ADC had waved it off, insisting instead on a full investigation by an independent panel,” the statement reads.
“With the so-called interim report of the ICPC, our fears have come to pass as the report is not only predictable, it appears more concerned with exonerating government officials rather than providing clear answers to the serious questions that the scandal has raised.”
The party argued that the ICPC’s characterisation of the matter as a failure of government procedures was difficult to reconcile with the evidence already in the public domain.
It said the alleged scheme could not have been carried out by Adeyemi alone, given the institutional approvals and resources reportedly made available to the organisation.
“The ICPC report appeared to have given the impression that what happened was mere failure in government processes or procedures,” ADC said.
“This position is difficult to sustain in the light of publicly available evidence, which establishes that this is not an error of omission or a mere glitch in the system.
“Instead, what happened was a grand scam that could have been possible only with the active connivance of government officials and institutions at the highest level.”
The ADC questioned why Adeyemi was the only person recommended for prosecution when the ICPC had acknowledged that its investigation was still ongoing and that other individuals could have been involved.
The party also challenged the commission to explain how the alleged fake agency obtained office space at the Federal Secretariat, secured government personnel, received a reported N1.3 billion budget allocation, acquired official vehicles and had armed security personnel attached to it.
“If all that the commission had to present was a preliminary report, why not simply present it as confidential brief to the president instead of making a public drama of it in a manner that potentially prejudiced the overall investigation and cast Adeyemi as the principal culprit?” the political party asked.
“What Nigerians expected was an investigation into how a ‘fictitious agency’ managed to obtain all authorisations and institutional support required to operate as a legitimate government agency,” the ADC stated.
“Yet this same organisation managed to secure office space within the Federal Secretariat.
“If, according to the ICPC report, Adeyemi had kicked down the door of the Secretariat office and allocated it to himself, did he also deploy the civil servants to himself, allocate a reported N1.3 billion to himself in the 2026 Appropriation Act, allocate official vehicles with customised number plates to himself and deploy armed security to himself?
“It is indeed impossible to answer yes to these questions and not conclude that this is the most incompetent and porous government in Nigeria’s history.”
It said the discovery of two additional fictitious organisations allegedly linked to Adeyemi should prompt a broader investigation into how such entities were able to operate within government.
“If an investigation into one fake government agency leads investigators to two more, then the obvious question is no longer merely how one individual perpetrated an elaborate fraud,” the ADC said.
“The question is how has this administration operated that made such systemic criminality possible?”
The ADC further questioned how the PFIPC was included in the 2026 Appropriation Act, arguing that budget allocations normally pass through various stages of proposal, verification and approval.
It said the National Assembly’s investigation into the budget allocation should complement the ICPC probe and urged the anti-graft agency to establish who proposed, processed and verified the allocation to the purported agency.
“Budgetary provisions do not materialise by accident. They leave records, submissions, approvals and an audit trail,” it said.
“The National Assembly has itself commenced an investigation into how PFIPC found its way into the federal budget.
“The ADC therefore expects the ICPC to tell Nigerians who proposed the allocation, who processed it, who verified the beneficiary agency and how a body that the presidency now says never existed survived the scrutiny required to appear in an Appropriation Act.”
The opposition party demanded the immediate publication of the ICPC’s full interim report and called for the identification and sanctioning of all public officials whose actions or negligence may have enabled the alleged fraud.
The ADC said the investigation should follow the evidence wherever it leads rather than focus on a single individual, arguing that anything less would fail to address the wider questions surrounding the PFIPC controversy.
