A video of Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, the man at the centre of the alleged ₦1.3bn “ghost agency” scandal, has resurfaced online on Monday as the controversy surrounding the purported government agency continues to intensify.

The video, recorded during a press conference held in late June 2026, showed Adeyemi defending his claim to the leadership of the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council while challenging the position of the Presidency and the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President, led by Femi Gbajabiamila.

,During the briefing, Adeyemi questioned how an agency described by the Presidency as non-existent could appear in official budget documents.

He said “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 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 further claimed that the agency maintained 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 also alleged that the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, demanded 48 per cent of the agency’s proposed ₦27.4bn take-off grant and referenced an alleged demand for ₦12.5bn.

The Presidency has, however, consistently denied the allegations.

The Office of the Chief of Staff has maintained that the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council has no legal backing 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, to portray himself as the Director-General of the purported council.

Authorities also alleged that he operated from an office inside Phase III of the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja, where he hosted meetings with government officials, diplomats, foreign investors and members of the public while presenting himself as a senior government official.

The controversy deepened 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 ₦1.3bn in budgetary allocations, sparking widespread public scrutiny over how a body the Presidency now describes as fictitious appeared in the federal budget.

The reported allocation comprised about ₦803m for personnel, ₦200m for overhead and ₦300m for capital expenditure.

Adeyemi is facing an eight-count charge bordering on forgery, impersonation, false personation and operating a fictitious government agency before the Federal High Court in Abuja.

The Presidency has maintained that the matter is before the court and urged the public to disregard his claims, while Adeyemi insists he is not an impostor and says the court will determine the dispute. (PUNCH)

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