Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has blamed what he described as institutional loopholes and administrative lapses in the Bola Tinubu administration for the emergence and operation of the purportedly fictitious Presidential Fiscal Intelligence and Financial Compliance (PFIPC).
Atiku, in a statement issued by his media office on Monday, said the PFIPC controversy exposed serious weaknesses in the internal control and oversight mechanisms of the Federal Government.
He questioned how Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who allegedly presented himself as an official of the agency, was able to operate without being detected by government institutions responsible for verifying the existence and activities of federal agencies.
Atiku said the reported allocation of ₦1.3 billion to the PFIPC in the 2026 Appropriation Act was particularly troubling, arguing that it pointed to possible failures in oversight by the Budget Office, the National Assembly and the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
“How did Prince Adeyemi fool the Presidency, CBN, the Office of the SGF, National Assembly and the EFCC?” Atiku asked.
“How did this so-called agency that was not a legal creation come to have a budgetary provision, office, staff and even security details?”
The former vice president also questioned how senior government officials could have interacted with the purported agency without establishing its legal status.
“How come the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives met with the so-called Director General of the agency without due diligence?” he asked.
According to Atiku, the scale of the alleged deception suggested that Adeyemi could not have operated the purported agency without assistance or institutional failures within government.
He argued that the episode demonstrated the need for a comprehensive investigation into how the PFIPC was created, funded and allowed to operate within the federal bureaucracy.
Atiku also alleged that a culture of forgery and weak verification mechanisms had become prevalent under the APC-led administration, which he said could have enabled the purported fraud to escape detection by security and regulatory agencies.
He called for all individuals who may have provided institutional support or otherwise helped to legitimise the purportedly illegal agency to be identified and prosecuted.
“Atiku advised that to avert a repeat of this disgraceful episode, all those who may have provided institutional support to legitimise an illegal agency need to be identified and prosecuted,” the statement said.
The former vice president maintained that the PFIPC controversy should prompt a broader review of the government’s administrative and financial control systems to prevent similar incidents in the future.
