A disturbing pattern of unending, self-destructive administrative chaos in appointments to consequential public office positions is defining President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government, which signposts Tinubu’s lack of control of his government and the reality of a shadowy, disorganised, feuding and mercenary cabal of conscienceless influence peddlers in the Presidential Villa.
Muhammadu Buhari pioneered this sort of disabling administrative anarchy, but Tinubu has upped it a notch, to the point that no one can be certain of the validity or even legitimacy of appointments announced by the presidential spokesperson.
As I’ll elaborate shortly, there is now a recurring pattern of the Presidency repeatedly announcing appointments before verifying the legal office, the incumbent’s status, the supervising minister’s knowledge and the SGF’s capacity or willingness to implement the decision. The result is a government in which press releases conflict with appointment letters, agencies announce presidential decisions of doubtful origin and incumbents disregard publicly announced replacements.
In this atmosphere of administrative anomie, it’s no surprise that someone can forge, or be assisted to forge, presidential instruments to establish a fraudulent presidential council that can pass through multiple layers of the Nigerian federal bureaucracy.
Buhari’s administrative infirmity expressed itself chiefly through lethargy, vacancy and spectacular absent-mindedness. He took more than five months to constitute his first cabinet in 2015. After dissolving the boards of federal agencies in July 2015, he waited until December 2017 to announce 209 chairpersons and 1,258 board members. At least eight of the appointees had died. In 2020, Buhari appointed Tobias Chukwuemeka Okwuru to the Federal Character Commission two months after Okwuru’s death. By August 2020, reports counted about 80 federal agencies without substantive heads or governing boards or both.
Buhari’s major weakness was that he forgot to appoint people when he needed to, which I used to characterise as “ungovernance”, but Tinubu’s is a different hue. He appoints, unappoints and reappoints people with the nervous rapidity of a man changing television channels during a thunderstorm.
The examples have become too numerous to ignore. Maryam Shetty arrived at the National Assembly for ministerial screening in 2023 and discovered that her nomination had vanished. Tinubu replaced Niger Delta Development Commission nominees within 24 hours of naming them. Kashim Imam’s appointment as chairman of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency lasted less than a week.
In August 2025, the presidency reappointed Muheeba Dankaka as chair of the Federal Character Commission at 6:35 p.m. and announced Ayo Omidiran as chair at 10:44 p.m. One commission acquired two presidentially appointed chairs within four hours.
The Nigerian Television Authority provided an even more dramatic case. Tinubu, through his official spokesman, appointed Rotimi Pedro as director-general in August 2025 while Salihu Dembos still had an uncompleted tenure. Two weeks later, the presidency reversed itself and restored the incumbents. Premium Times reported that the supervising information minister learned of the original appointments through the media. Its investigation traced the upheaval to a presidential aide who had bypassed the minister and supplied allegations that an official review found spurious.
That episode illuminates the anatomy of the disorder. Access appears to have become authority. An aide can insinuate an allegation into the presidential bloodstream, procure a consequential announcement and leave ministers scrambling to discover what their own government has done.
Then came NIPOST. In October 2023, the presidency appointed Tola Odeyemi postmaster-general with immediate effect. But NIPOST’s own communications channels subsequently announced the reinstatement of Sunday Adepoju. Workers barricaded the headquarters against Odeyemi. She eventually assumed office.
The current imbroglio at the Border Communities Development Agency perfects the absurdity. On June 27, 2026, the presidency announced Abdulrazak Sa’ad Namdas as the agency’s new director-general, replacing Dakorinama Alabo George, who it said had resigned to run for an election in Rivers State.
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Namdas reportedly still awaits the formal appointment letter from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. George says he never resigned, claims his announced replacement was an error and continues to act as head. On July 9, he met the finance minister to discuss agency funding. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga answered with two words: “Namdas stays.”
Who, then, leads BCDA? The man announced by the presidency, the man recognised by the bureaucracy or the man exercising operational control? Trust TV’s analysis sharpened the question by pointing out that the BCDA Act creates the office of executive secretary, while the presidency calls the office director-general. The Act also makes clear that the executive secretary is the accounting officer who controls contracts, staff and public property. This semantic confusion therefore carries fiscal consequences. One agency now has two titles, two claimants and three divergent sources of authority: public announcement, formal instrument and administrative possession.
A president has the prerogative to hire and fire appointees. State authority, however, requires legible procedure. An appointment exists in law and administration through an authenticated instrument, a clear effective date, a lawful office and an orderly transfer of power. A press release floating free of these elements is risible political theatre. Repeated reversals convert presidential words into provisional rumours.
The suspicion of a cabal arises here. “Cabal” often functions in Nigerian discourse as an all-purpose name for invisible conclave of devils in the seat of power, an informal constellation of aides, patrons, bureaucratic gatekeepers and political financiers who can insert a name into a presidential announcement, withhold the letter that activates it, reverse the decision after resistance or sustain an incumbent against a published presidential directive.
The observable pattern establishes that Tinubu has lost the monopoly over the voice and force of his own presidency and that a cabal rules on his behalf. Competing nodes around him appear able to originate, obstruct and annul decisions. His government speaks in tongues, with each tongue claiming the presidential seal.
The scandal of the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, or PFIPC, becomes intelligible within this administrative Babel. The presidency says Adeniyi Adeyemi fabricated an appointment as director-general of a fictitious presidential agency. Yet this phantom acquired a ₦1.3 billion line in the 2026 budget, occupied federal office space, met foreign diplomats and secured an approved staff establishment after official verification failed. The Central Bank opened dollar and pound accounts for it on the Accountant-General’s mandate, although the accounts remained empty and inactive.
Calling Adeyemi a con man explains his intention, but his success diagnoses the sad, cabal-infested, fraud-prone, dysfunctional pathology of the Tinubu government.
A solitary impostor cannot travel through the Office of the SGF, Head of Service, Budget Office, Accountant-General, Central Bank and diplomatic system unless verification gates have collapsed or helpful insiders have opened them. PFIPC became a government agency through serial bureaucratic authentication. Fiction accumulated official stamps until it acquired the material attributes of fact.
How do we reverse this? We can learn from our former coloniser. Britain subjects many public appointments to a published Governance Code and oversight by an independent Commissioner for Public Appointments. Nigeria needs a publicly searchable presidential appointments register showing the statutory office, appointee, tenure, effective date, instrument number and current status.
Every presidential council and every entity in the federal budget since 2023 deserves a forensic audit. The National Assembly should trace who inserted PFIPC into the budget and who validated each stage of its bureaucratic incarnation.
PFIPC surfaced because its counterfeit authority collided with the real Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission. How many silent phantoms flourish because they have avoided such a collision? How many presidential appointments originate from people Tinubu cannot identify? How many announced decisions die inside the SGF’s office while their ghosts roam the news?
A government that cannot authenticate its own voice invites impostors to speak for it. A president whose appointees cannot tell whether they have been hired, fired or duplicated presides over a dysfunctional, self-dealing banana republic. His authority has become divisible, tradable and deniable.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
