A video of Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, the man at the centre of the alleged ₦1.3 billion “ghost agency” scandal, resurfaced online on Monday as controversy surrounding the purported government body intensified.
The footage, recorded during a press conference in late June 2026, shows Adeyemi defending his claim to the leadership of the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council while disputing the position of the Presidency and the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila.
During the briefing, Adeyemi questioned how an agency the Presidency has described as non-existent could appear in official budget documents.
“The national budget does not emerge in isolation. It passes through multiple layers of technical drafting, executive coordination, ministerial inputs, Budget Office review, and finally legislative scrutiny by both chambers of the National Assembly,” he said.
He argued that the inclusion of the agency in official budget documents raised questions about the integrity of the budget process.
“The question becomes unavoidable: At what point in this process did references to a non-existent agency allegedly enter the official record? And if they are indeed present in official documentation, what does that imply about the integrity of the process that produced and approved those documents?” he asked.
Adeyemi also claimed that the agency operated several accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“The same acclaimed non-existent agency has a domiciliary account, a pounds sterling account and a Treasury Single Account, all domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria. Is it even possible to open an account with fictitious documents in a commercial bank in Nigeria today, let alone the Central Bank of Nigeria?” he said.
He further alleged that the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, demanded 48 per cent of the agency’s proposed ₦27.4 billion take-off grant, amounting to ₦12.5 billion.
The Presidency has consistently denied the allegations.
The Office of the Chief of Staff maintains that the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council has no legal basis and was never established by the Federal Government.
According to the Presidency, Adeyemi forged official documents, including appointment letters bearing the names and signatures of senior government officials, in an attempt to present himself as the Director-General of the purported council.
Authorities also allege that he operated from an office within Phase III of the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja, where he held meetings with government officials, diplomats, foreign investors and members of the public while presenting himself as a senior government official.
The controversy intensified after it emerged that an entity listed in the 2026 Appropriation Act as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council received more than ₦1.3 billion in budgetary allocations, prompting public scrutiny over how a body the Presidency now describes as fictitious appeared in the federal budget.
The reported allocation included about ₦803 million for personnel, ₦200 million for overheads and ₦300 million for capital expenditure.
Adeyemi is facing an eight-count charge before the Federal High Court in Abuja bordering on forgery, impersonation, false personation and operating a fictitious government agency.
The Presidency has said the matter is before the court and urged the public to disregard Adeyemi’s claims. Adeyemi, however, maintains that he is not an impostor and says the court will determine the dispute.
