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The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the controversial Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), Has directed the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Olatunji Disu, to produce the council's self-acclaimed Director-General, Adeniyi Adeyemi, within 48 hours.

The committee ordered the IGP to ensure Adeyemi appears before it at noon on July 29, 2026, as lawmakers intensify their probe into the circumstances surrounding the establishment and operations of the disputed agency.

The directive came on Monday during the committee's hearing, where the Accountant-General of the Federation, Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, disclosed that his office rejected the PFIPC's request to open a Treasury Single Account (TSA) because it failed to satisfy the required due diligence procedures.

Ogunjimi told lawmakers that although the council applied for a TSA account, the request was declined pending compliance with established financial and administrative requirements.

The controversy surrounding the PFIPC began after Adeyemi publicly accused the President's Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, of demanding 48 per cent of the council's proposed ₦27.3 billion take-off grant. He further alleged that Gbajabiamila received ₦400 million through a proxy and sought an additional ₦200 million to facilitate presidential approvals.

Gbajabiamila has strongly denied the allegations in a sworn statement, insisting he has no personal, official, or professional relationship with Adeyemi. He also rejected claims that he demanded or received money, abused his office, interfered with law enforcement agencies, or had any involvement in the alleged death of Babatunde Tanimola, whom Adeyemi claimed acted as an intermediary. The Chief of Staff equally denied allegations linking him to an assassination attempt on Adeyemi or any interference with ongoing investigations.

Following the allegations, President Bola Tinubu directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to investigate the matter.

Two weeks ago, Gbajabiamila filed a ₦15 billion defamation suit against Adeyemi at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. In the suit, he is seeking ₦10 billion in general damages, ₦5 billion in aggravated damages, ₦200 million as the cost of the action, and a court order compelling Adeyemi to publish a retraction and apology in five national newspapers and across all social media platforms where the alleged defamatory statements were circulated.

The House of Representatives had earlier constituted a 12-member ad hoc committee, chaired by Yusuf Gagdi, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the creation of the PFIPC, its inclusion in the 2026 Appropriation Act, and the alleged ₦1.3 billion budgetary allocation to the agency. Gagdi assured Nigerians that the committee would conduct a thorough and impartial investigation.

Last week, the ICPC confirmed that it questioned Gbajabiamila as part of its ongoing investigation.

During Monday's hearing, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Esther Walson-Jack, told the committee that her office neither allocated office space at the Federal Secretariat nor deployed personnel to the PFIPC.

She explained that while the council requested the deployment of officers, the request was merely acknowledged and no action was taken. She also dismissed speculation that the PFIPC occupied office space within the Federal Secretariat, stating categorically that no such allocation was made by her office.

Similarly, the Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, informed lawmakers that none of the funds appropriated for the PFIPC had been released or spent.

According to Yakubu, although the National Assembly approved funding for the council, the statutory conditions required for the release and expenditure of the funds were never met.

"The conclusion is firm. Not one kobo of the personnel provision could lawfully have been drawn, and not one kobo was drawn. The overhead provision never matured into a lawful cash release. The capital provision never matured into procurement or expenditure. The conditions required for spending were not met and were not close to being met. There is therefore no personnel expenditure to recover. The money never moved because the controls held," he said.

The committee is expected to continue its investigation when Adeyemi appears before lawmakers later this week.

 

 

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BUA Cement Plc reported an 80% year-on-year increase in profit to N324.9 billion for the first half of 2026, supported by foreign exchange gains, lower finance costs, and robust operating cash flows.
The cement manufacturer recorded a net foreign exchange gain of N16.57 billion during the six-month period, compared with N782.8 million in the corresponding period of 2025. The performance marks a significant turnaround from the N9.70 billion foreign exchange loss recorded for the full 2025 financial year, reflecting a more stable exchange rate environment after the sharp currency volatility experienced over the past two years.
The improved currency position contributed to a sharp decline in net finance costs, which fell to N3.41 billion from N31.37 billion in the first half of 2025, despite the company's sizeable borrowings. Finance income also climbed to N18.73 billion, driven by higher interest earned on cash balances.
BUA Cement continued to demonstrate strong cash-generating ability, with net cash from operating activities rising to N278.45 billion. The company maintained healthy cash flows even as it paid substantial dividends and continued investing heavily in expanding production capacity.
Capital expenditure exceeded N60.67 billion, with most of the investment directed toward property, plant, and equipment. As a result, the value of the company's property, plant, and equipment increased to N1.22 trillion, up from N1.18 trillion at the end of 2025.
Construction work-in-progress also rose to approximately N183.86 billion, underscoring the scale of the company's ongoing expansion projects.
According to its earnings report, BUA Cement is advancing plans to increase installed production capacity from 17 million metric tonnes per annum to 20 million metric tonnes per annum, including the development of a greenfield cement plant in Ososo, Edo State.
Commenting on the performance, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Yusuf Binji said the company remained focused on unlocking growth opportunities while maintaining strict cost discipline.
"We have delivered a strong quarter despite the constraints encountered," Binji said.
He noted that the company's growth initiatives and cost-optimization programmes were beginning to deliver results, adding that ongoing process improvements are expected to enhance productivity and strengthen cost efficiency in the coming quarters.
"I am very encouraged by our outlook and performance over the next quarters," he added.

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If you have not discovered this special gem, this is the moment to do so. It is LASG’s powerful, truly smart digital information tool.

The objective: to bring over 300 essential public services in the state to the fingertips of its citizens. “Everything you need from payments and permits to registrations and public services on a unified digital platform designed to be faster, simpler, and secure,” it says.

It is Lagos, Nigeria’s pre-eminent state, snatching early advantage of AI. Eko Smart is organised, comprehensive, illuminating.

If it involves Lagos State, you can ask any question and receive an immediate response. Begin from your “Citizen’s Dashboard,” as I did, and receive your Citizen ID immediately.

What this means is that you can now perform your citizenship rights and responsibilities wherever you are, and not have to plunge into the notorious traffic.

Eko Smart is not yet available as an app, but you can find it on your browser and search it in your own words. There are some bad links, though, such as https://lasrab.lagosstate.gov.ng/. And no, you cannot locate local police locations, because the police link is, perhaps predictably, broken.


But mostly, this is an excellent, enabling tool. And towards enhancing Eko Smart, anyone can send complaints or suggestions. In an age in which information is life itself, Lagos is now several miles and a few years ahead.

Eko Smart is where every government in Nigeria should be deploying digital technology to empower citizens to access and use information easily.

On the contrary, most governments and their agencies (the police, for instance), live in fear, often because of their own track records. The National Assembly has a paltry archive, perhaps to cover up its distressing inadequacies.

The so-called anti-corruption agencies are often far more noise than substance, pretending that anyone can combat corruption without being accountable.

Consider, for instance, that for almost two months now, DSS has been investigating a breach of INEC’s Continuous Voter Registration Portal!

Similarly, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission is undertaking a 30-dayinvestigation of the PFIPC scandal, as the entire world now knows: how a nonexistent institution flourished for two years in the federal system, hiring hundreds of staff and securing a N1.3bn luxury spot in the 2026 budget.

And yes, we have a global audience: The Guardian, BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle Africa, TRK Afrika, Modern Ghana, Inkl Australia, Firstpost India, Washington Examiner.


Last week, ICPC investigators reportedly interviewed Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to President Tinubu and a man with previous ethical issues, who is implicated in this matter.

We wait to see if ICPC can apply the same rigour in the highest of places that it applies to ordinary Nigerians and small operatives or whether it offers political passes.


And we wait to see if the agency can complete this assignment without establishing a thorough understanding of the federal budget and budgeting process, which are a messy jungle. I offer the documents of the Budget Office, dating arbitrarily from 2010 (as if that was the start of the Fourth Republic).

How crazy is this jungle? Some budget years have just a few documents, while others have between 57 and 65. In other words, there is no structure. There are no standards and no methods. That is the path in the jungle where investigators, researchers and citizens are supposed to get lost.

The 2026 budget has two documents: The Bill and the Details. Remember that President Tinubu assented to the budget on April 17. On May 17, FIJ published this report questioning why the details were still unavailable. On June 7, when I wrote this story, they were still not available. It is befuddling to me, then, that both documents are now on the website, dated January 8, 2026.

Maybe ICPC will ask these questions. Maybe it will not. It has the resources; my argument has always been that it does not have the heart.

What might it learn? To establish where we are, the agency must look at several previous budgets. I have. Among others, this is clear: in the 2025 budget documents (the Executive Proposal and the Act), Code 0111062001, and the terms “FOREIGN INTERVENTION” and “PFIPC” do not appear at all. The item only appears in the 2026 Bill, confirming that the PFIPC strategy was a target, not a broader technique.


ICPC must dig deep. For instance, why does the National Council on Climate Change (Code 0111058001) have a budget line in Budgets 2024 and 2026 but is missing from the 2025 documents? How does a statutory body drop out for a year only to quietly reappear? What about agencies and departments?

And what happened to NELFUND (Code 0111061001), which is funded in both 2025 documents but is not in the 2026 Presidency list at all?

Will ICPC notice these? What are the implications? What substantial issue have I not noticed that ICPC might identify, using its considerable resources in forensically examining the budgets of, say, the past five years?

All of this is important because the real reason we are in this bind is the collapse of the oversight responsibilities of the National Assembly, an institution whose decline I lamented in 2022. And it is at a time that Senate President Akpabio is celebrating Nigeria’s descent into the grave of a one-party state, boasting that the opposition in the upper chamber has shrunk to just a handful of Senators.

Implicit in that celebration is the assimilation of the anti-corruption agencies into the bowels of the presidency, for which there is no better example than Akpabio himself, a man whose ethical challenges the EFCC no longer addresses.

In a 2011 report, Corruption on Trial,” Human Rights Watch stressed the structural vulnerability of the EFCC, noting how the agency was deeply susceptible to presidentially-directed prosecution selectivity. The United Nations Convention Against Corruption Coalition, Transparency International, Chatham House, and the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium have all publicly flagged the weaknesses, and sometimes duplicity, of ICPC, the EFCC, and the Code of Conduct Bureau.

And now, we encounter the PFIPC scandal at a time that these agencies, pretending to be cathedrals of ethical uprightness, are feigning dizziness to “discover” that Nigeria loses up to N25 trillion to corruption annually.


Where have they been? The National Assembly inserted11,122 projects worth N6.93tn into the 2025 budget. The World Bank recently flagged 5,000 TSA gaps, while the IMF found N8.83 trillion in unreported spending outside the official 2025 budget.

But Nigerians are not surprised. Because Nigerian “anti-corruption” consistently demonstrates that important political criminals are immune from accountability. That makes our anti-corruption preachers only worshippers of the status quo, not servants of the law. T

And that is why the ICPC investigation of the PFIPC scandal is a joke on our anti-corruption agencies. You are not investigating anything: this time, it is ICPC itself, and by implication the other anti-corruption agencies that are on trial.

People can see you, and through you. And you will go on record.

Sonala Olumhense

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There is a powerful lesson in the political fate of Keir Starmer, but it is not merely a British lesson. It is not about Westminster drama, Labour Party turbulence or parliamentary theatre. It is about a deeper principle without which no democracy can remain healthy for long: leadership improves only when failure has consequences.

That is the hard discipline of public office. Power must never be separated from responsibility. Authority must never be insulated from scrutiny. Failure must never disappear into speeches, excuses, party loyalty or ethnic sentiment. Where consequences are credible, leaders think harder, prepare better, listen more carefully and act with urgency. Where consequences are weak, mediocrity becomes comfortable, impunity becomes normal, and national performance declines.


The Discipline of Consequence

Britain is not a perfect democracy. Its politics can be ruthless, hypocritical and theatrical. Its resignation culture is sometimes shaped by media pressure, party calculations and factional warfare rather than moral clarity. Yet one thing remains instructive: public office is often treated as conditional. A minister may rise high, but scandal, policy failure, breach of trust or loss of confidence can still end a career. The system sends a clear message: power is not untouchable.


That message matters. A resignation does not, by itself, reduce inflation, restore electricity, defeat insecurity or end poverty. But it performs an essential democratic function. It tells citizens that leadership is answerable, officials that office is not a permanent shelter, and institutions that failure must be recorded, judged and acted upon. Above all, it reminds the political class that public trust is not an ornament of power; it is the foundation on which power rests.

This is the question Nigeria must confront honestly: what consequences do public officials face when they fail?


Insecurity persists, but how many security and intelligence chiefs have resigned because citizens were not protected? Communities are attacked, families displaced, lives lost, yet those entrusted with national security often remain untouched. The power supply remains unreliable despite decades of promises, huge expenditure, and repeated reforms. Yet homes remain dark, businesses remain burdened by generators, and no one at the highest level appears to pay a personal price.

Inflation continues to erode purchasing power. The poor are forced to choose between food, transport, rent, school fees and medicine. Yet how many economic managers have resigned for policies that deepened hardship? Projects are abandoned, inflated, delayed or poorly executed, but how often do ministers accept responsibility? Corruption remains embedded in public life, but how many officials implicated in misconduct resign before they are forced out? Poverty and unemployment diminish millions, especially young people, but how many public officers leave because their programmes did not work?

These questions go to the heart of governance. A society cannot keep rewarding failure and expect excellence. It cannot treat public office as a privilege without duty and expect trust. It cannot normalise excuses and expect results. When leaders know nothing serious will happen after failure, failure becomes easier to repeat.

When Failure Has No Cost

Not every setback should lead to resignation. Governance is complex. Ministers inherit broken systems. Security chiefs operate under difficult conditions. Economic managers face global shocks. Infrastructure delivery can be slowed by litigation, funding constraints, insecurity and procurement complications. Leadership is not magic, and public officials are not miracle workers. But complexity cannot become a permanent hiding place for incompetence. Difficulty explains some failures; it does not excuse all of them.

The issue is not whether leaders will fail. They will. The issue is what happens after failure. Is there a public explanation? An independent investigation? Dismissal where negligence is established? Prosecution where corruption is proven? Restitution where public funds are wasted? Resignation where credibility has collapsed? Or does every failure vanish into the next ceremony, committee, slogan or appointment?

A political system without consequences does not merely tolerate poor leadership; it manufactures it. If loyalty matters more than performance, loyalty will replace competence. If tenure is protected by politics rather than results, urgency weakens. If audit reports gather dust, waste becomes routine. If abandoned projects do not affect future awards, abandonment becomes a business model. If citizens know nothing follows outrage, outrage itself eventually becomes tired.

That is how nations lose trust. Citizens lose faith when the same promises return under different slogans, when the same failures survive successive administrations, when leaders preach sacrifice while living above the people’s pain, and when public officers are promoted after failure, recycled after scandal and celebrated after mediocrity.

This creates a dangerous democratic distance. Citizens endure insecurity while officials retain convoys. Businesses collapse under power shortages while ministers attend energy conferences. Families struggle under inflation while economic managers issue forecasts. Young people search for work while employment programmes produce reports rather than results.

This is why resignation matters. In the best sense, resignation is not always disgraceful. Sometimes it is an honour. It is a public acknowledgement that leadership carries responsibility beyond personal innocence. A minister need not personally cause every departmental failure to accept that it happened under his or her authority. A security chief need not pull the trigger to accept responsibility for a security architecture that failed to protect citizens. Resignation says the office is bigger than the officeholder; public confidence matters; responsibility cannot be delegated only downward.

Restoring Accountability to Public Life

Where resignation is absent, other forms of accountability must be strong. There should be clear performance benchmarks for ministers and agency heads. Security institutions should undergo periodic public review. Major infrastructure projects should be tracked through transparent delivery dashboards. Audit reports should lead to enforceable sanctions. Legislative oversight should be serious, evidence-driven and independent. Anti-corruption agencies should act without fear or selective enthusiasm. Public procurement should be open enough for citizens to follow the money from approval to delivery.

The deeper lesson from Britain is not that every resignation is pure or that every political culture should copy Westminster. The lesson is that democracies need mechanisms that make leadership answerable. In some cases, the consequence will be resignation. In others, dismissal, reprimand, salary forfeiture, prosecution, restitution, disqualification from public office or electoral defeat. What matters is that failure must not be weightless.

A nation serious about development cannot treat accountability as a foreign culture. Responsibility is not British. Integrity is not Western. Consequence is not alien to African governance traditions. Long before modern constitutions, communities understood that authority carried obligation. Chiefs, elders and leaders were judged by the welfare of the people. Leadership without responsibility was never honourable. Modern politics has too often separated office from shame, power from duty, and privilege from service.

Countries do not decline only because leaders make mistakes. They decline when mistakes become normal; when incompetence has no cost; when corruption is explained away; when failure is defended by party loyalists, ethnic champions and paid voices; and when citizens stop expecting accountability because experience has taught them that the powerful rarely answer for anything.

Keir Starmer’s example should therefore be read beyond Britain. It should force us to ask whether our own political system rewards performance or merely protects power; why failure in public office so rarely leads to resignation; why officials who preside over broken systems remain in office after public confidence has collapsed; and whether democracy can retain meaning when citizens vote, suffer, complain and wait, yet those responsible for repeated failure remain untouched.

No country rises above the quality of its accountability. And no leadership culture can produce excellence when failure is free.

– Dr Dakuku Peterside is the author of Leading in a Storm and Beneath the Surface.

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