To do what the PFIPC did, an agency in Nigeria must pass through some of the most powerful offices in government – the secretary to the government of the federation – effectively the government’s chief administrator, the head of the civil service, the accountant-general who controls public accounts, the budget office, and finally parliament, which must pass the spending into law.

Babachir Lawal has sat at the top of that chain.

He served as secretary to the government of the federation, the office that assigns agencies their space and status, under Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari.

“There’s no way [that office] in a normal system would not know that the agency is fake,” he told the BBC. “You cannot create a budget code for yourself without the budget office knowing. There must be connivance with officials within.”

His conclusion was blunt: “You must have officials within the system who will validate your corrupt behaviour.”

Oluseun Onigbinde reaches a similar view by a different route.

He co-founded BudgIT, a Nigerian transparency group that first drew attention to the council’s funding. He points out that the PFIPC does not appear in the budgets for 2023, 2024 or 2025 but then surfaces – fully formed and with its own budget code – in 2026.

“This agency actually emanated and found itself in the budget from the executive,” he said – meaning it came from within the president’s own side of government, not from parliament. “The functional head of the agency cannot just do that alone. It has to come from the State House [the president’s office],” he told the BBC.

Onigbinde listed the checks a genuine agency must go through – an office in the federal secretariat, sign-off from the civil service, a budget code, and a multi-step approval to open a bank account. He said the “lone impostor” explanation did not add up.

“I don’t know how you go through all these tracks and you still come out at the end and this agency is fake,” he said. “He does it have backing. The government just has to be honest about who exactly are the people involved.”

The government’s own account has shifted. Its spokesman first said Adeyemi had “fraudulently opened” an account at the Central Bank of Nigeria. The accountant-general’s office later said no such account was ever activated, and that no public money was released.

The distinction matters.

Even if no money left the treasury, the affair has shown how easily the appearance of a real government institution can be created in Nigeria – a country actively courting foreign investors, whom this council was ostensibly set up to attract.

The BBC asked the presidency how the agency obtained its office, staff and budget line, and why it favours an internal investigation over an independent one. The presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Lawyers for Gbajabiamila said his position was set out in a legal letter and that he was not giving interviews. In that letter, seen by the BBC, they describe Adeyemi’s allegations as false and defamatory, say the two men have never met, and demand he issue a retraction or otherwise face criminal and civil proceedings, including a claim for 10bn naira in damages.

President Tinubu has ordered the country’s anti-corruption commission to investigate and report within 30 days, including on “the role of any public officer” who may have helped. Critics note that he did so while publicly declaring “100% confidence” in Gbajabiamila, who is listed as a witness at Adeyemi’s legal case. Opposition parties, senior lawyers and campaigners are demanding an independent judicial inquiry instead.

Nigeria is no stranger to large-scale corruption but previous scandals have tended to share a common ending: many names mentioned, few convictions.

Tinubu took office in 2023 promising reform, and points to more than 7,000 convictions and over 500bn naira recovered in two years. Critics say those numbers are dominated by low-level internet fraudsters, while politically connected figures are rarely touched.

What sets the PFIPC apart is not the amount of money, which is modest by the standards of some previous scandals, but the method. This was not money skimmed from a contract. It was, allegedly, an entire arm of government created from nothing.

Onigbinde describes it as “a symptom of the dysfunctional budgeting process”. He links it to the rapid growth in the number of government bodies: a 2012 official review recommended cutting Nigeria’s agencies, but their number has instead roughly doubled, to well over 1,200.

“It’s a costly waste of public resource,” he said – in a country heavily in debt. As the investigation widened, its sharpest effect was felt far from Abuja. Police searching for Adeyemi, who had gone into hiding, went instead to his family home in Ogbomoso in the south-western Oyo state, and detained his elderly father, Chief Adetunji Adeniyi.