The State House on Thursday distanced itself from the controversial Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), telling a House of Representatives ad-hoc committee that it never requested a budget code from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and had no prior knowledge of the body until media reports emerged.
The testimony came as Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) Corps Marshal Shehu Mohammed defended the Corps’ decision to issue seven official Federal Government number plates to the purported agency. He insisted the approvals followed established procedures and were based on documents and representations that appeared genuine at the time.
The committee, chaired by Hon. Yusuf Adamu Gagdi, is investigating the alleged fraudulent establishment of the PFIPC and its inclusion in the Federal Government’s budget framework.
Representing the Permanent Secretary, State House, Director of Administration Abdulkadri Idris stated categorically that the Presidency never requested generation of a budget code for the council.
“We did not send any correspondence nor any request to the Office of the Accountant-General in respect of this council. We don’t even know anything about this council. We never heard about this council until we started seeing it in the media,” he said.
Idris added that the State House neither sought approval for the creation of the PFIPC nor had any statutory responsibility for establishing such bodies. He dismissed as fake several documents presented to the committee that purportedly originated from the State House.
A letter allegedly signed by one “Akande Adewale” as Director of Administration and Support Services could not have come from the Presidency, he said, because no such official had ever served there. He presented a list of Directors of Administration from 2003 to date showing no such name, and noted that no department known as the Directorate of Administration and Support Services exists in the State House.
Committee chairman Gagdi said the panel had uncovered major discrepancies between documents obtained from the Accountant-General’s Office and official State House records. He described the contradictions as a significant development in the probe into how official government processes were allegedly manipulated.
The State House also denied issuing any appointment letter to the purported Director-General of the PFIPC, stressing that such political appointments are conveyed by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, not the State House.
In a memorandum dated August 6, 2026, Corps Marshal Mohammed outlined the FRSC’s standard operating procedure for issuing official number plates. He said every requesting ministry, department or agency must submit a formal application verified through the head of the relevant MDA, while newly established agencies must also provide their enabling law or instrument.
Because the PFIPC presented itself as a newly established federal agency, the Corps subjected its application to additional scrutiny. The process began with a letter dated April 4, 2025, from Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, followed by a reminder on April 11, 2025. Both were accompanied by documents purporting to establish the agency, its mandate and a list of vehicles.
FRSC officers visited a website with a Federal Government domain that listed senior government officials as board members and physically inspected an office at the Federal Secretariat Complex, Phase III, which appeared operational. Satisfied with the information, the Corps allocated seven official plates (PFIPC 01 to PFIPC 07) to a 2024 bulletproof Lexus LX, two Toyota Land Cruisers and four Toyota Hilux vehicles after verifying their chassis numbers.
Mohammed said the Corps was later shocked to discover that the PFIPC was not an approved Federal Government agency and that the representations made by Adeyemi were false. The FRSC has begun processes to retrieve the plates and has strengthened its internal verification procedures.
Gagdi questioned the verification process, noting that the documents lacked official security features and unusually listed President Bola Tinubu and other top officials as board members. Mohammed admitted the listing did not look normal but maintained the Corps acted on the information available at the time.
The committee directed the FRSC to provide the current status and location of all vehicles registered under the PFIPC and said it would conclude its investigation next Wednesday, with further invitations to relevant agencies.
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