The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has dismissed the interim report of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on the contentious Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), arguing that the findings have raised more questions than provided answers.
HURIWA in a statement yesterday by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko argued that the report seemed to be focusing only on the alleged offences of one person and did not establish how a government agency that was supposedly non-existent operated for a long time within the official circles.
The organization said it was not opposed to the prosecution of Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, whom the ICPC allegedly accused of forging documents, falsely presenting himself as Director-General of the PFIPC, creating additional agencies, opening bank accounts with forged instruments and exploiting weaknesses in government institutions, reports Saturday Guardian.
But it argued that the claimed activities of Adeyemi, in itself, did not explain how PFIPC came to look like an official government entity.
The issue, HURIWA said, was not just who allegedly fabricated the documents but how government institutions accepted and acted on the materials.
It queried how an agency that did not exist could have acquired official legitimacy, who admitted its operators into government circles, who authorised meetings and interactions with public institutions and why elementary verification procedures did not identify the alleged fraud.
The group also asked how the PFIPC got itself in the 2026 Appropriation Act with budgetary allocation reaching into billions of naira if it did not exist legally.
“The issues facing Nigeria are not difficult and complicated,” remarked HURIWA.
“There is a need to find out who handled documents associated with the agency, who disregarded red flags and who allowed it to function unchallenged,” it stated.
The group warned that the ICPC’s preliminary findings could lead to the idea that the scandal was primarily the work of a single man.
It stated that such a result would be difficult to reconcile with the scale and duration of the alleged actions, particularly with the participation of various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
“HURIWA is not prepared to buy into the narrative that a single private citizen acting alone was able to penetrate several Ministries, Departments and Agencies, conduct operations for a long period, have official engagements and allegedly built a sophisticated network of fake documents without major setbacks or possible complicity from within the public service,” Onwubiko said.
The association observed that deficiencies in inter-agency coordination, verification processes and internal controls were themselves detected by the ICPC and that such weaknesses called for additional examination.
It said Nigerians deserved to know whether the errors were simply administrative lapses, or certain officials actively aided the activities of the purported phoney agency.
HURIWA was especially scathing of any recommendation for administrative punishment on public personnel whose negligence may have aided the operation.
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