There is an old saying in government circles that government has no house but records. Administrations come and go. Presidents leave office. Ministers are reshuffled. Permanent Secretaries retire. Policies are altered and institutions are reorganised. Yet the State retains its identity because it remembers through its records. It governs through records. It appropriates through records. It appoints through records. It authorises expenditure through records. In the end, the documentary trail becomes the institutional memory of government.

That is why the controversy surrounding the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) has outgrown the personalities presently dominating public discourse. It is no longer simply a contest between the Presidency and Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew. It has become a constitutional question about the integrity of public records and the credibility of the administrative processes upon which government itself rests.

The Presidency has publicly maintained that PFIPC never existed and that the accused forged appointment letters, official documents and other instruments to create a fictitious government institution. Those allegations are now before a competent court of law. Their determination belongs exclusively to the judiciary, where evidence will be tested and the rights of every party protected.

But while the criminal trial will determine individual liability, it cannot by itself answer another question that has become increasingly important in the court of public accountability.

If an institution officially described as non-existent nevertheless appears to have left documentary footprints across different layers of government administration, how did those footprints come into existence? That is the question.

Government is not administered by rumours or assumptions. It is administered through records. Budgets are records. Personnel postings are records. Registry acknowledgements are records. Official correspondence is a record. Office allocation requests are records. Financial authorisations are records.

Every official action undertaken within government leaves a documentary trail. Every file passes through desks. Every communication enters a registry. Every approval, recommendation, endorsement or rejection leaves evidence of administrative custody. Records are not passive archives; they are the constitutional instruments through which government exercises lawful authority.

The issue, therefore, is no longer merely whether PFIPC legally existed. The more compelling public question is whether official records appear to show that the name travelled through established governmental processes. If so, under what authority? Through which offices? Following what verification procedures? Under whose administrative supervision?

These are institutional questions requiring institutional answers. A phantom may deceive an individual. It should not easily navigate a public administration built upon verification, documentation and accountability.

That is precisely why this controversy should not be reduced to a choice between believing the accused or believing official denials. The larger constitutional interest lies elsewhere. It lies in preserving public confidence in the integrity of the State's documentary system.

Modern government does not function by verbal assurances. It functions through processes. Documents are received. They are registered. They are minuted. They are scrutinised, transmitted and endorsed, or rejected and archived.

Every movement creates responsibility. Every responsibility identifies a custodian and every custodian owes the public an explanation where legitimate questions arise.

The controversy has gradually ceased to be a contest between accusation and denial. It has become an inquiry into the integrity of documentary governance itself. When official records, administrative processes and public explanations appear to move in different directions, the constitutional obligation of the State is not merely to deny. It is to reconcile the record. For the authority of government ultimately rests not upon assertion but upon the credibility of its own documentation.

That is why this matter deserves calm, objective and transparent scrutiny. If established procedures worked, government should demonstrate how they worked. If they failed, government should explain where they failed. If and when officials acted properly, the records should establish that fact. If there were institutional weaknesses or administrative lapses, identifying them is not an act of political hostility. It is an essential requirement of democratic accountability. Strong institutions are strengthened, not diminished, by honest scrutiny. Indeed, one of the enduring tests of a constitutional democracy is not the absence of controversy but the willingness of its institutions to account for their own actions through verifiable records.

Public confidence cannot rest indefinitely upon competing press statements. It rests upon evidence. It rests upon transparent administrative processes. It rests upon the documentary integrity of the State.

This is why the present controversy should be seen as an opportunity rather than merely another political embarrassment. Whatever the eventual outcome of the criminal proceedings, government owes Nigerians a clear explanation of the administrative pathways through which documents associated with the disputed institution appear to have travelled. Such an exercise would neither prejudice the pending trial nor determine anyone's guilt. Rather, it would reinforce the principle that public institutions remain accountable for the records generated within their own systems. Ultimately, this is not simply about one disputed agency or one individual standing trial.

It is about the House itself. The strength of any government is measured not only by its ability to prosecute wrongdoing but also by its willingness to examine its own administrative machinery whenever legitimate questions arise. A confident State has nothing to fear from the scrutiny of its own records. For government has no permanent house except the House of Records. And records, unlike rhetoric, leave footprints.

•Lanre Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists, writes from Abuja.

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