The Presidency has told the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to expose the internal criminal elements working with Prince Matthew Adeniyi to operate a fictitious presidential agency for prosecution.
The presidency alleged that there are internal collaborators enabling Prince Adeniyi in the smear campaign against the chief of staff to the president, Femi Gbajabiamila.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, who made the declaration in a post on his X handle, accused Adeniyi of being an “irredeemable con artist” who is expertly exploiting Nigerian public psychology regarding corruption to shield himself from criminal accountability by dragging the name of the chief of staff into his multi-billion-naira fraudulent enterprise.
He said investigators from the Department of State Services, the police, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had been tasked with unraveling the full extent of the collaboration that allowed Adeniyi to forge presidential appointment letters, maintain 34 bank accounts in the names of fictitious government bodies, host foreign ambassadors, and open a Central Bank account, all while parading himself as the director-general of a non-existent body called the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
Ajayi said: “What is not in doubt is that internal collaborators enabled Adeniyi to get this far. That is precisely what investigators from the DSS, the police, and the EFCC must now unravel.
“The criminal network within the affected institutions must be dismantled, and everyone found to have played a role should be arrested and prosecuted.”
He further wrote: “In Nigeria, the easiest and most believable allegation anyone can throw at a public officer is corruption. Once that accusation is thrown into the mix, the water is polluted, the lines are blurred, and everyone is kept busy arguing over distractions rather than the real issues.
“Matthew Adeniyi understands Nigerian public psychology, and he is exploiting it expertly to shield himself. He is an irredeemable con artist who is attempting to drag the name of the chief of staff to the president, Femi Gbajabiamila, into his criminal enterprise. The chief of staff is simply his last straw.
“Many commentators have rightly pointed to the systemic failure that allowed such an elaborate fraudulent scheme to flourish. Daredevil criminals who operate around government institutions with the sole aim of pulling off spectacular heists are common across the world.
“Some succeed, many fail. The part many commentators have overlooked, however, is how that same system eventually detected the fraud and fished him out.
