The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, has admitted that due diligence was not done to spot some discrepancies in the documents provided for the establishment of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC).
She offered the admittance Wednesday in Abuja while reappearing before the Ad-hoc Committee of the House of Representatives investigating the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the fake Council and the consequent allocation of N1.3 billion to it in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
Specifically, on the current controversies surrounding the establishment of the agency, she said “we have never encountered this. It’s almost a century, and we believe that like in every situation in society, criminals, like the current one would always try to be a step ahead of law enforcement.”
According to her, there was need for more clarifications on “the issuance of an authorized establishment and the issuance of a recruitment waiver.”
She explained that the budget call circular was issued as usual by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation for federal agencies, to come to defend their manpower budgets.
Briefing the committee, Wilson-Jack said: “I will just go straight to the matter at hand, which is regarding the interaction of my office with the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Financial Intervention Promotion Council.
“What we now saw when this matter came up, I requested to see the documents myself and I saw that the Establishment Act was not really an authentic Act. Now I saw that because, I have almost 30 years of legal practice experience.
“And so immediately I saw it, I knew it was not. Moreover, I’m also a certified legal drafter. And so the Act was not original, it was fake. Yes, I noticed that.
“For the letter of appointment, I will not be able to say because when I looked at it, it had the State House logo. And I wasn’t immediately in a position to compare with other similar letter headed papers.
“In closing, we would like to say that in this particular situation, we interacted with the representatives from the PEAC/PFICP. We also got them to come to receive the authorised establishment, which they did.
“And we also saw that between the authorised establishment and the recruitment waiver, we were able to find the document for the authorised establishment, but till now we are unable to find that of the recruitment waiver.
“The documents that were presented had PEAC/PFICP. However, like I said, due diligence may have detected whether those documents were actually authentic…
“We, having seen all the facts and observed all the documents, concede that we ought to have carried out more due diligence in the discharge of the duties of the office in issuing an authorised establishment and a recruitment waiver to the PEAC/PFICP.
“So, we take our responsibility, and we will definitely see that we review our processes to make them more fraud-proof,” she further said.
…Why Police can’t produce Adeyemi – IGP
In a related development, the Inspector General of Police, Tunji Disu, also informed the committee that the phantom DG of the PFICP, Martin Adeyemi, was detained under a subsisting court order, and therefore cannot produce him as demanded by the House.
The committee had, on Monday, directed the IGP to produce Adeyemi before it on Wednesday.
Explaining the NPFs position to the committee, Wednesday, the DCP in charge of National Crime Centre of the Nigeria Police, Olufemi Ayinlola, who represented the IGP, presented a letter detailing the reason.
The letter stated that the suspect, Adeyemi was in custody based on court order, and so “the Nigeria Police Force may not be able to produce the suspect as requested in view of the subsisting court order.
“The Nigerian Police Force acknowledges the constitutional oversight of the National Assembly and remains committed to cooperating with the committee in the discharge of its mandate.
“However, in this case, it will be appreciated if the production warrant could be sought from a court of competent jurisdiction to enable the police to comply with this request.”
And after the presentation by the Police, the committee chairman, Yusuf Gagdi, remarked that there would be continuous engagements with relevant agencies, behind closed doors where necessary, and present its preliminary findings to Nigerians next week.