PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu, on Wednesday, August 19, directed the commissioning of a comprehensive forensic probe into the fictitious Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council scandal.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, who disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, said: “That is to do with the fake agency that is called the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
“Mr. President gave us the updates about the work the ICPC has done, and as a result of that, the Council has directed that we commission a forensic investigation that will look into our processes, our procedures, internal control weaknesses that allow some of these things to happen, because the findings discovered that we indeed have additional fake agencies.
“What is important is to establish what went wrong, how it can be prevented, and going forward, how we can make our systems stronger.
“Systems are built when you find problems, you deal with them decisively, and that’s exactly what Mr. President and council have directed today.”
Oyedele stated that the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and his own office had been directed to work with other relevant agencies to address the matter holistically, in its administrative, accounting and governance dimensions.
The minister also disclosed that the President specifically ordered the review to extend to the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), adding: “Mr. President directed that the review should extend to IPPIS, because if you have fake agencies, you most likely have fake employees.
“In a country where you would have seen Mr. President doing everything to ensure we enhance payroll, salaries and wages, we can’t afford to have fake people hanging around.
“It undermines our ability to pay our people well, who are doing the hard work.”
Noting that N9.495trillion in subsidy savings and incremental revenue had gone into incremental payment of salaries and allowances to civil servants, which exceeded the actual savings that accrued to the Federal Government from the subsidy removal,
Oyedele stated: “So, we don’t want to be further constrained by fake agencies and fake personnel.
“This is something we take very seriously, and the Nigerian people will get updates as we progress.
“It’s collective responsibility. Something went wrong. Someone managed, with whatever people they colluded with, to create a fake agency that had an office within the institution of the Federal Government.
“They managed to register and obtain an administrative code, as well as a TSA code. The only thing that didn’t happen was we didn’t pay any money to those accounts. But it’s gone too far to even get to that level.
“Now the idea is we want to find out what went wrong and strengthen the system.”
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, while confirming that ICPC’s report identified more than the initially known fake council, said: “The President was informed that it is not just about the so-called Presidential Foreign Promotion Council and the fake DG that was there, but that there were at least two additional fake agencies that were in that process.
“So, the President said this is not just about accounting; it is also about the administrative looseness that was discovered by the ICPC.”
Idris re-echoed that Tinubu President had directed the AGF and the Finance minister to jointly examine both the administrative and accounting systems to identify the lapses that enabled the scandal, and to engage professional audit firms for a forensic, total evaluation of the system, “with a view to plugging this once and for all, so we don’t have this national embarrassment again.”
He said the scandal likely predates the current administration, adding: “I want you to know that this didn’t just happen now. It is possible that this dates back longer than when the President was in office.
“The President is not just looking at this; he is looking at the possibility that this may also have occurred elsewhere, and trying to find a solution that will block this from recurring going forward.”
