Loading ...ABUJA — Prominent legal practitioner and former Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Barrister Solomon Dalung, has fired a scathing critique at the Presidency following its official statement regarding the ₦1.3 billion “phantom council” scandal rocking the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In a biting analysis of the 1,279-word dossier issued by Presidential Spokesperson Bayo Onanuga, Dalung argued that the administration’s aggressive attempt to absolve the Chief of Staff, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, has completely backfired. Instead of shutting down public scrutiny, Dalung asserts that the official state response has exposed terrifying, systemic institutional failures within the highest machineries of the Nigerian government.
“A Story of Spectacular Institutional Failure”
Reacting to the government’s narrative that the central figure, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, is merely a sophisticated “con artist” who masterminded the entire operation, Dalung pointed out the staggering absurdity required to believe the state’s timeline without acknowledging insider complicity.
Dalung observed that even if the criminality of the accused is taken as absolute truth, it leaves a trail of governance lapses that should deeply alarm every Nigerian:
“You are asking Nigerians to believe that one private citizen woke up one morning, invented a presidential agency, forged his own appointment, secured office space inside the Federal Secretariat, recruited staff, held meetings with diplomats, corresponded with government institutions, allegedly opened a CBN account through official channels, and if the official budget documents are anything to go by, the same ‘non-existent’ agency found its way into the Appropriation Act with an allocation running into billions.”
— Barrister Solomon Dalung
Dalung noted that if a single civilian could bypass these multiple layers of federal vetting unassisted, Nigeria’s core national security and administrative safeguards are effectively non-existent.
The Deafening Silence on the ₦1.3 Billion Line Item
A primary point of contention raised by Dalung is the Presidency’s complete failure to address the presence of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) on pages 50 and 51 of the approved 2026 Appropriation Act.
| Governance Loophole | Dalung’s Analytical Query | Systemic Threat |
| Budgetary Insertion | How does an agency deemed completely “fictitious” successfully secure a ₦1,302,978,784 federal line item? | Proves that multi-billion Naira insertions can pass executive reviews and legislative approvals completely unvetted. |
| Federal Secretariat Access | How did an unapproved body secure physical office space, install staff, and host international diplomats within a restricted federal complex? | Highlights a critical physical security breach within the heart of the civil service administration. |
| Apex Bank Integration | How did the suspect successfully bypass the Office of the Accountant-General to open a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) account? | Exposes severe vulnerabilities within the state’s financial technology and treasury systems. |
The Extraordinary Death of the Key Witness
Dalung further drew public attention to the most dramatic and convenient detail buried within Bayo Onanuga’s statement: the sudden, tragic demise of Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola.
According to the official police dossier, Adeyemi named Tanimola as the primary intermediary who helped him secure the forged appointment letter from the Office of the Chief of Staff. However, when police teams moved to track Tanimola down, they discovered he had burned to death in a fire incident at Kachi Hotel in Abuja on October 22, 2025—exactly five days before Adeyemi’s own arrest.
Dismissing attempts to treat this as a closed chapter, Dalung demanded to know if an autopsy, coroner’s inquest, or forensic analysis of Tanimola’s digital and financial records had been carried out. “These are not conspiracy theories,” the former minister insisted. “They are the obvious questions any serious investigator would ask.”
A Demand for Institutional Transparency
Concluding his intervention, Dalung reminded the Tinubu administration that accountability cannot begin and end with pushing a single individual into a courtroom to face trial.
He maintained that the public deserves a comprehensive, public-facing forensic audit showing the documentary trail, timelines, and exact failure points within the Ministry of Budget, the Office of the Accountant-General, and the National Assembly. Until the administration can explicitly show who signed off on the ₦1.3 billion phantom line item, Dalung warns that the public will continue to view the scandal not as an isolated fraud case, but as a deeply entrenched insider operation.
