The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoS), Esther Walson-Jack, has told lawmakers that the office occupied by the controversial Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja was officially allocated to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF), not to the council.
Walson-Jack made the disclosure on Monday while appearing before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the PFIPC controversy and the N1.3 billion appropriated to the council in the 2026 budget.
The PFIPC has been at the centre of controversy following allegations that it operated without legal backing. The matter also drew attention after Adeniyi Adeyemi, who allegedly ran the council, claimed he was appointed by President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila. The presidency has dismissed the claim, insisting the appointment letter bearing Gbajabiamila’s signature was forged.
Adeyemi was arrested by operatives of the Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT) in Osun State on July 14.
Appearing before the committee, Walson-Jack said her office never assigned office space to the council.
“We can state categorically that the office of the head of the civil service of the federation did not allocate any office space to the PFIPC,” she said.
She explained that the PFIPC approached her office on August 6, 2025, seeking approval for its organisational structure, but the request was initially rejected because the required legal documents establishing the agency were not submitted.
According to her, newly created organisations are expected to provide an establishment Act, an enabling legal instrument or other valid documents before such requests can be processed.
Walson-Jack told lawmakers that during the 2025 annual workforce projection exercise, PFIPC officials informed her office that the council was participating for the first time and was operating with staff seconded from other government agencies.
She added that the council requested approval for its establishment structure and a waiver to recruit permanent employees, stating that 14 officers, including its director-general, were already working with the organisation.
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The HoS said the council also submitted copies of the director-general’s appointment letter and documents indicating it had been assigned a budget code. She explained that the request was included in a batch of submissions approved on July 18, 2025, by the permanent secretary overseeing the office during her absence.
Walson-Jack also denied allegations that her office deployed civil servants to the PFIPC.
According to her, while the council requested staff postings, the application was never approved, stressing that recruitment and deployment of personnel fall under the responsibility of individual ministries, departments and agencies.
Responding to questions from lawmakers on why the HoS office accepted the council’s documents without verifying the authenticity of its purported enabling Act, Walson-Jack admitted that her office failed to carry out sufficient checks.
She explained that officials who first reviewed the documents were not lawyers and therefore did not detect that the alleged enabling Act was fake.
The HoS said she only uncovered the irregularity after the controversy surrounding the council’s budget allocation prompted her to personally examine the documents.
She said the incident had exposed weaknesses in the verification process and announced plans to strengthen internal procedures.
“We need to have another level of verification. We need to have a lawyer on the team that will receive legal documents so that the lawyer can assess every legal document,” she said.
She added that additional layers of scrutiny would now be introduced before legal documents are accepted.
“So we concede that we didn’t do the best we ought to have done in cross-checking those documents at the time they were presented,” she admitted.
Walson-Jack maintained that matters relating to the establishment, supervision and operation of the PFIPC fall under the responsibility of the OSGF and other relevant government institutions, not the Office of the Head of the Civil Service.
Also testifying before the committee, Abdullahi Hamisu, Director of Banking Services at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), disclosed that two foreign currency accounts were opened for the PFIPC on the instruction of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
He said the apex bank followed standard account-opening procedures and did not require an enabling Act before processing the request, adding that neither of the accounts was ever funded or operated.