In Abuja’s power corridors, there is a quiet rule everyone understands but rarely admits: not everything that operates within government is officially recognized, and not everything officially recognized is legitimate.
That is why the unfolding scandal around Prince Adeniyi Matthew is less shocking to insiders and more embarrassing to those now pretending it couldn’t have happened.
Because the real story is not that a man allegedly created a fake agency. The real story is how the system made room for him.
According to the presidency, Matthew allegedly forged documents and paraded himself as Director-General of a non-existent entity the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council. On paper, it sounds like a crude scam. But inside Abuja, this is where the narrative begins to fall apart.
Sources within the bureaucracy quietly admit that access at that level is never accidental.
You don’t just walk into the Federal Secretariat and secure office space without someone “clearing” you. You don’t operate a government-linked account without institutional touchpoints. You certainly don’t get a line item in the national budget ₦1.3 billion, no less without passing through layers of review, endorsements, and approvals.
So, who signed off?
That is the question the official statements are carefully avoiding.
Because what is being presented as a lone actor’s deception looks, to those familiar with the system, like something far more structured: a convergence of influence, silence, and complicity.
Inside sources suggest that what often passes for “verification” in government circles is little more than paperwork and perceived backing. Once a file carries the right stamps or appears to originate from the right office doors open. Questions disappear. And responsibility becomes everyone’s and no one’s at the same time.
It is a system where legitimacy is not always proven it is assumed.
And Matthew, allegedly, understood that better than most.
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The speed and depth of his access raise uncomfortable realities. Meetings with ministers. Engagements with ambassadors. Strategic sessions that should have triggered background checks at multiple levels. Yet nothing happened.
Not because no one noticed but because no one wanted to be the one to ask.
In Abuja, questioning authority is often seen as career suicide. Delaying a “presidential initiative” can end postings. Challenging a figure who appears connected can isolate you within the system.
So people comply. Files move. Meetings hold.
And the illusion becomes real.
Even more telling is how the situation reportedly unravelled not through internal safeguards but through external friction. It was the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission raising concerns about overlapping mandates that forced attention onto the so-called agency.
In other words, the system didn’t catch the anomaly. It tripped over it.
Then comes the most explosive layer Matthew’s own allegations.
His claims that senior figures demanded billions from the agency’s take-off funds and facilitated his appointment for hundreds of millions of naira may be dismissed officially. But within insider circles, such allegations are not treated as outrageous they are treated as familiar.
Because the uncomfortable truth is this: the structure he allegedly exploited is the same structure many operate within just with more discretion.
This is where the Presidency’s narrative begins to look less like a full explanation and more like damage control.
Framing this as a simple case of forgery isolates the problem. It suggests the system worked that a bad actor slipped through but was eventually caught.
But the timeline tells a different story.
This was not a breach. It was prolonged access.
This was not deception at the gates. It was acceptance at the table.
And until there is transparency around who approved what, who endorsed whom, and who looked the other way, the official version will remain incomplete.
Here is the question insiders are already asking:
Was this man truly operating alone or did he simply become the most visible face of a system that routinely blurs the line between formal authority and informal power?
Nigeria does not just have a problem with fraud.
It has a parallel governance problem where influence can manufacture legitimacy, and legitimacy can be rented long enough to become reality.
Until that shadow system is confronted, exposed, and dismantled, this will not be the last “ghost agency.”
It will simply be the one that got caught.
By: Faleye Oluwatosin Simon
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