By Law & Society Magazine Editorial Board
If a man can produce a government appointment letter after being accused of running a government agency that does not exist, the problem is no longer confined to the man. It is a problem with the system that produced, received or failed to verify the document.
Nigeria has seen its share of impostors. Men have appeared as generals they never were, professors they never became and officials who never held the offices they claimed. Most of those cases are straightforward: a fraudster creates an identity and attempts to persuade other people to believe it.
The controversy surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), however, has taken the country into more complicated territory.
Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew is standing trial over allegations arising from his claim to head the organisation. The Federal Government has said the council did not exist, while the prosecution alleges that official-looking documents were used to sustain the claim. Adeyemi has contested the allegations and the matter remains before the courts.
Then came another case.
George Buchi Nwabueze, accused by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission of heading an unauthorised government body, has produced an appointment letter which he says was issued by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. The letter purports to appoint him National Coordinator and Executive Director of the National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office.
That document deserves more than a passing glance.
If it is genuine, the government owes the public an explanation of the authority under which the appointment was made and the legal status of the organisation concerned. If it is not genuine, the authorities should establish who produced it, how it acquired an official appearance and whether anyone within the public service facilitated its use.
Neither possibility is comfortable.
The point is not to determine guilt from newspaper reports. That belongs to the courts. The point is to ask why the Nigerian state can apparently reach a stage at which the authenticity of a government institution itself becomes a matter of dispute.
The PFIPC episode should have been enough to trigger that examination.
The purported council did not merely exist on a letterhead. Its name appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Act, with a provision of about N1.3 billion. Government officials subsequently explained that the money was never released and that existing financial controls prevented the appropriation from becoming actual expenditure.
The safeguards worked at the point where money might have left the treasury. But the more basic control appears to have failed much earlier: Determining whether the institution being provided for in the budget actually existed in law or under a valid executive instrument.
A budget carries the authority of the Nigerian state. When an organisation appears in it, citizens, foreign governments, banks, contractors and other public institutions are entitled to assume that the body has been properly created and recognised by government. If that assumption can be wrong, the problem goes well beyond the organisation in question.
They should not have to conduct their own investigation to find out otherwise.
This is where the Federal Government should resist the temptation to treat the PFIPC and Nwabueze controversies as isolated cases of clever impostors. If the allegations against the individuals are proved, they should face the consequences prescribed by law. But prosecution cannot repair a weakness in the administrative system that allowed disputed institutions to acquire the appearance of legitimacy.
Nigeria needs a single, authoritative public register of federal institutions and official government bodies.
The register should identify every ministry, department, agency, commission, council, presidential initiative, special project and other body exercising governmental functions. It should state the instrument under which each was created, the authority responsible for its supervision, its legal status, its head, its approved functions and, where relevant, its budgetary status.
The register should be searchable by the public.
A bank receiving a letter from a purported government agency should be able to verify it. A foreign embassy should be able to verify it. A contractor should be able to verify it. A civil servant receiving instructions from another government body should be able to establish, within minutes, whether that body actually exists.
Government itself should be required to use the same system.
Such a register would not eliminate fraud. It would, however, remove one of the conditions in which fraud flourishes: uncertainty.
The current cases also call for a more searching examination of the proliferation of government committees, councils, initiatives and special projects. Not every government programme requires an Act of the National Assembly, and not every administrative project is a statutory agency. Presidents and ministers necessarily create temporary structures to pursue particular policies. But the legal basis, limits and lifespan of those structures should never be obscure.
An organisation should not acquire the privileges and authority associated with the Federal Government merely because it has a familiar logo, a government address, an appointment letter or a website carrying official-sounding language.
The Nigerian state must know what it has created.
It must know who speaks for it.
And, perhaps most importantly, it must be able to prove both facts to anyone who asks.
The courts will decide the cases against Adeyemi and Nwabueze. They should do so on evidence and without pressure. But government has a separate responsibility that does not require a conviction.
It must examine the chain of administrative decisions that allowed disputed institutions to acquire the appearance of legitimacy.
If Nigeria waits for the next “fake agency” before doing so, the country will have learnt the wrong lesson from the cases already before it.
The issue is not simply how to catch the next impostor.
It is how to make it impossible for an impostor to look like the Nigerian state.
