Fake Agency Scandal: The Unanswered Questions
By Jerry Adesewo
Nigeria has always been a generous country. We have fake pastors with genuine congregations, fake doctors with grateful patients, fake professors with authentic convocation gowns, and fake military officers who occasionally salute better than the real ones.
But even by Nigerian standards, the Fake Agency Scandal deserves its own museum.
Only in this country can a man allegedly create—or operate—a government agency that the government says does not exist, occupy government offices, issue official correspondence, allegedly access government financial systems, interact with senior officials, and carry himself with all the confidence of a substantive Director-General.
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Then, from nowhere. After months or years of functioning comfortably, everyone suddenly discovers: “Ah! The agency is fake.”
Just like that? The agency is fake, but the office is real. The 100 plus staff members are real. The files are real. The official vehicles are real. The CBN budget code is real.
Only the agency is fake. If satire ever needed a country, Nigeria has volunteered.
Question One: Who Signed the Appointment Letter?
Every Nigerian who has ever applied for a government job knows one painful truth. Government appointments don’t fall from heaven.
They pass through files. They pass through desks. They pass through signatures.
Sometimes they pass through ten desks before one signature finally appears.So the first question practically asks itself.
Who signed the Director-General’s appointment letter? Because appointment letters don’t sign themselves.Even fake letters require genuine signatures.
If the signature was forged, whose signature? If it wasn’t forged, who authorised it?
Or are we expected to believe that Microsoft Word has suddenly acquired constitutional powers?
Someone somewhere approved something. Somebody’s pen travelled across paper. Unless, of course, in today’s Nigeria, appointment letters are now downloaded directly from the cloud. Not cloud computing. Cloud governance.
Question Two: Who Opened the Office?
Government offices are not Airbnb apartments. You don’t just walk in carrying a laptop and declare yourself Director-General.
Somebody allocated that office. Somebody released the keys. Somebody connected electricity. Somebody approved furniture. Somebody probably saluted him every morning. Did security officers never ask questions? Or did he simply arrive each day saying: “Good morning. I’m fake.” And they replied: “Welcome, sir.”
Government buildings are among the most security-conscious places in the country. Visitors sign registers. Staff carry identity cards. Vehicles receive clearance. Yet an allegedly fake DG reportedly operated comfortably.
One begins to wonder whether the real miracle wasn’t the agency. It was the access.
Question Three: The Curious Case of the Budget Code
Now we enter the financial holy of holies. The budget code.
Every civil servant knows government financial systems are not birthday souvenirs distributed at weddings.
Budget codes are created through official processes. They are linked to appropriations. They interface with financial management systems. They don’t fall from mango trees.
So how exactly did an allegedly fake agency obtain what appeared to be an authentic budget code? Did the computer invent one? Did the Central Bank suddenly become sentimental? Or was someone, somewhere, helping legitimacy wear a counterfeit suit?
Fact is, budget codes don’t emerge from prayer meetings. They emerge from systems. And systems have operators. That’s why the alleged Fake Agency is a proud beneficiary of a whopping sum of N1.3b as allocation for 2026.
Question Four: The Benefactor Who Conveniently Died
Perhaps the most cinematic chapter in this unfolding drama is the story that the man allegedly responsible for facilitating the appointment reportedly died barely five days before the scandal exploded.
Five days. Not five years. Not five months. Five days before the DG was initially arrested.
If Nollywood writers submitted this script, producers would reject it for being too unrealistic.
Yet here we are.
The one person many hoped could answer uncomfortable questions is suddenly unavailable for questioning—not by law, but by mortality. Could this have been mere coincidence?
In Nigeria, coincidence has become so overworked that it now requires annual leave.
Question Five: Whistleblower or Person of Interest?
Then comes perhaps the most politically delicate question.
The name of Femi Gbajabiamila has surfaced in public discussions—not necessarily as an accused person, but as someone reportedly instrumental in exposing aspects of the scandal.
Which raises another interesting question. Is he merely the whistleblower? Or does his proximity to the unfolding events naturally invite further questions?
This is not an accusation. It is a recognition of a basic principle. Especially when the man at the centre of it all alleged that the Chief of Staff to the President, received the sum of N400m from him, through the deceased middleman, who helped him secure the appointment. And that a balance of N200m is due.
When scandals of this magnitude occur, investigators don’t merely ask who exposed them.
They also ask: Who knew what? When? How? And through whom?
The public deserves clarity, not because suspicion equals guilt, but because transparency is the only antidote to suspicion.
The Bigger Scandal
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. The scandal is not merely that someone allegedly ran a fake agency.
The scandal is that an ecosystem existed in which such a thing could allegedly happen.
One individual cannot manufacture government legitimacy alone. Legitimacy requires accomplices. Not necessarily criminal accomplices. It could be administrative, institutional or bureaucratic accomplices.
This should include people who looked away. People who stamped documents. People who opened doors. People who approved access. People who decided not to ask obvious questions.
Nigeria: Where the Impossible Holds Office
If the allegations are true, then Nigeria has achieved something remarkable. We have moved beyond ghost workers. It is now confirmed, like I was told some years back, that we now have ghost institutions, used only to siphon funds.
Soon, perhaps, we’ll discover a Ministry of Imaginary Affairs with a fully funded budget and quarterly performance reports.
Nothing should surprise us anymore.
After all, this is a country where fake drugs cure real diseases, fake universities award genuine certificates, fake prophets perform authentic miracles, and now, allegedly, fake agencies can function with astonishing administrative efficiency.
Perhaps the fake agency wasn’t the anomaly. It was merely the most honest reflection of a system where appearances often matter more than verification.
One final question remains.
If an allegedly fake Director-General could function for so long without detection…
How many genuine offices are currently occupied by people we simply haven’t discovered yet?
That, dear readers, may be the scariest question of them all.
Because in Nigeria today, the line between fake and official is becoming so thin that sometimes the only difference is who gets arrested first.