Esther Walson-Jack, head of the civil service of the federation (HoS), says due diligence was not carried out to verify documents presented by the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) before approval was granted for its staffing structure and recruitment waiver.
Walson-Jack spoke on Wednesday while appearing before the committee investigating the controversy surrounding the PFIPC and the N1.3 billion allocated to the council in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
She said her office approved the staffing structure and recruitment waiver after receiving the council’s establishment Act, and the letter of appointment presented by Adeniyi Adeyemi, its purported director-general.
“My office received the letter of appointment and the establishment Act and, based on those documents and also based on the interaction with the representatives of the PEAC/PFIPC, we went on to issue the authorised establishment and later the recruitment waiver,” she said
The HoS said her office could have exercised greater scrutiny before granting the approvals, adding that all the documents turned out to be fake.
“Now, 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/PFIPC,” she said.
“We do know that the PEAC used to exist as an ad hoc organisation on its own, and the documents that were presented had PEAC/PFIPC. However, as I said, due diligence may have detected whether those documents were actually authentic.
“So we take our responsibility, and we will definitely see that we review our processes to make them more fraud-proof.”
Femi Gbajabiamila, chief of staff to President Bola Tinubu, is at the centre of the PFIPC controversy.
Adeyemi, the man accused of operating the agency, claimed the chief of staff issued his appointment letter — an allegation Gbajabiamila has denied.
The presidency had said the appointment letter bearing Gbajabiamila’s signature was forged, while the chief of staff had earlier petitioned security agencies over the matter.
Adeyemi was arrested on July 14 by operatives of the police intelligence response team (IRT) in Osun state.
