In the last few days, one name that has been on the lips of Nigerians is that of Prince Matthew Adeniyi Adeyemi. Adeyemi became a midnight sensation last week when the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity issued a press statement that literarily threw him under the bus while exonerating the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, of any wrongdoing in what has now become a national scandal. But beyond Onanuga’s statement is the deeper rot of what public administration has become in Nigeria.
Hitherto, Adeyemi was just a small-time con artist, unknown beyond Ogbomoso, Osun State, where he was born. Still in his 30s, Adeyemi loved rubbing shoulders with the ‘high and mighty’ in the society. To gain traction for his sort of ‘business’, he loved taking pictures with prominent personalities, which are conspicuously displayed on his social media pages to give the impression of a ‘big man’ to the unwary.
As an undergraduate at the Ladoke Akintola University where he claimed to study Agronomy, Adeyemi contested to be the Student Union Government (SUG) President twice. He lost on both occasions. But that did not stop him from parading himself as the SUG President. He left LAUTECH in 2015, and by 2018, he was rubbing shoulders with the influential within society. In November 2016, he paraded himself as an Ambassador and President General of the World Youth Organisation (WYO), an affiliate of the United Nations. He claimed to have been elected in New Delhi, India. Many local media organisations in Nigeria celebrated him until the UN denied the existence of such a body.
He wormed his way into the heart of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Pictures of him with OBJ are all over social media. Ditto with former President Goodluck Jonathan. He has taken pictures with former United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, as well as the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi. The late Soun of Ogbomoso, Oba Jimoh Oyewunmi Ajagungbade III once fell for his antics when he promised to give jobs to hundreds of indigenes of the town. To fulfil the promise, he ran adverts on both print and electronic media in the state. Application forms were sold to many, only for him to disappear after millions of Naira had been realized.
The same character is in the news again, bringing shame to the country. In 2024, Adeyemi set up ‘shop’ at the second floor, phase three of the Federal Secretariat in Abuja, and claimed to be the Director-general of a parastatal coined as the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council. He told whoever cared to listen that he got the job through an insider after paying the sum of N400 million to Gbajabiamila, with an understanding of paying a balance of N200 million.
Armed with the letter of appointment, he was able to get office accommodation at the secretariat. From there, he also got a waiver from the Head of Service to employ 300 staff. The office of the Auditor-General of the Federation also deployed three accounting staff to the ‘agency’ upon request. All those employed directly got enrolled into the federal government salary-paying system – the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS). Adeyemi lived large and on several occasions, summoned envoys and foreign ambassadors to meetings in his ‘office’.
However, trouble started when he requested for a note verbale from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that would facilitate the issuance of visas for some of the staff to travel to the United States of America.
Officials at the Ministry, who have never heard of the agency, requested for clarity from the office of the National Security Adviser and Chief of Staff to the President.
Within the same period, staff of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council (NIPC) noticed that another government agency was performing similar functions as theirs and also sought clarity from higher authority. Gbajabiamila denied knowledge of Adeyemi and his agency, and security agents were invited to investigate.
In the process of investigation, the police searched the office and Adeyemi’s home in Suleja, recovering vital documents and exhibits and was promptly arrested. In Adeyemi’s statement to the police, he claimed that one Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola assisted him in procuring the fake appointment letter. Following his claim, the police went after the said Tanimola, and found out that Tanimola had mysteriously died in a fire incident at Kachi Hotel in Abuja on 22 October, five days before Adeyemi’s arrest. Tanimola’s body was also allegedly seen by the police at the morgue, confirming the death.
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 verbale from the Foreign Affairs Ministry to enable him and his staff to obtain US visas. The police also found out that Adeyemi operated 34 bank accounts, with nine opened in the names of his fictitious agencies, some of which have been discovered to include the FCT Investment Promotion Agency and 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.
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. He is due in court on July 27.
Adeyemi was on police bail when he recently claimed that Gbajabiamila appointed him as DG of the fictitious agency. He also addressed a press conference where he alleged that he ran into trouble because he declined to give 48 per cent of the N27,395,510,136 take-off grant of the agency to Gbajabiamila.
But Onanuga’s statement, rather than expose the antics of a con artist, has brought to the fore, the type of government we run in Nigeria. The scandal lays bare a government wandering in a fog of confusion, crippled by incompetence and weighed down by disappointment.
That a con artist could penetrate the system deeply enough to operate a CBN account is an unforgivable institutional failure. In saner climes, the Accountant General of the Federation would already be on suspension, while officials of the apex bank would be answering hard questions. By treating this national embarrassment so casually, we have handed our critics fresh ammunition to mock our institutions and question our capacity for governance.
But my suspicion is that Adeyemi is working for some powerful interests who threw him under the bus when the matter became public. This reporter was at the Federal Secretariat last week and actually confirmed that Adeyemi had an office on the second-floor phase 3 until November last year. Presently, the wing of about 20 offices that Adeyemi and his team occupied has been reallocated to Professor Attahiru Jega, Special Adviser to the President and Coordinator, Livestock Development. Professor Jega and his officials moved into the offices vacated by Adeyemi and his team in December last year.
For him to have penetrated the CBN to open an account, penetrated the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), had his way at the National Assembly, the Budget Office, embassies in Nigeria, enrolled his staff on IPPIS through which they drew salaries monthly – shows that we now operate a Banana Republic, where anything goes.
There is more to this. Unlike certificate forgery or impersonation issues, this is a national fraud that cannot be overlooked. Do we need to call out our dear President Tinubu to wear his garment of authority and power and do the needful over this national embarrassment? Nigerians are waiting to know what an independent panel would unravel. It beats the imagination how a con artist and his cahoots were able to penetrate almost all agencies of government to establish a national agency. While we await that, implicated government officials, including Gbajabiamila, should step aside pending the conclusion of an independent probe.
How does a fictitious agency appear in the national budget? Budget allocations do not descend from heaven. They pass through ministries, the Budget Office, executive review and legislative approval. Who introduced the line item? Who processed it? Who signed off on it? Who failed to ask whether the agency even existed? If the Presidency wants Nigerians to focus exclusively on Adeyemi is an impostor, the courts would clearly determine that. But the Presidency cannot ask the public to ignore the conduct of government institutions in the same breath. This is bigger than one man. If the agency was fake, Nigerians need to be told how it entered the budget. If the appointment was forged, we need an explanation on how government systems repeatedly interacted with the supposed beneficiaries for almost one year before the scam was detected.
If official channels were deceived, we need to be convinced about where the safeguards failed. If there was no insider involvement, we need the documentary trail that proves it. Accountability does not begin and end with charging one individual to court. It also requires explaining how the machinery of government appeared to validate, accommodate, or fail to detect what is now described as a complete fabrication.
Until those answers are provided, this matter is far from settled.
That is not merely a story of one man’s audacity; it is an indictment of the weaknesses within the government’s verification, security, and administrative systems.
If officials across multiple ministries, agencies, financial institutions, and diplomatic circles interacted with this purported agency, then there was a collective breakdown of due diligence at several levels of government. The fact that concerns only escalated after complaints from another government agency raises serious questions about internal coordination and oversight. Even more concerning is the implication for national security and Nigeria’s international reputation.
If, as stated, Adeyemi was able to engage diplomats, seek official diplomatic privileges, and obtain government recognition sufficient to open official accounts, then the issue transcends ordinary fraud. It reveals vulnerabilities that could be exploited by far more dangerous actors. The Presidency cannot simultaneously present this as a simple case of impersonation while overlooking the systemic failures that allegedly enabled the impersonation to flourish. We should use this glaring failure as a call to duty to strengthen our institutions.
Rather than focusing primarily on defending the Chief of Staff from political criticism, the government should be explaining what reforms have been implemented to ensure that no individual can again create a phantom federal agency, operate from government premises, interact with foreign missions, and allegedly deceive multiple state institutions. Accountability should not end with the accused alone; it must extend to the officials and systems whose lapses made such an extraordinary episode possible in the first place.
See you next week.
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