ICPC Uncovers Another Fake Agency As Tinubu's Anti-fraud Drive Intensifies

How many fake agencies can the Tinubu Presidency go after at a time? When I posed this question in my column in early August, I intended it as rhetoric. The fake agencies and their operators apparently took it as a challenge.

On Friday evening, the ICPC Chairman, Dr Musa Aliyu, SAN, emerged from his second meeting with the President in 48 hours to announce the discovery of yet another fake agency, grandly named the National Brands Development and Made-in-Nigeria Special Project Office and promoted by one Prince George Buchi Nwabueze. Side note: Because of the length of these agency names, I'll refer to them by their promoters, who happen to be 'Princes'. Say, Prince Adeyemi's PFIFC or Prince George's agency.

So, I sat there among my colleagues, listening to Aliyu reel out another episode of an ongoing soap opera whose production studio is in the Nigerian civil service. We were arguably the first set of ears to get the gist, a privilege that comes with the burden of sharing it with the rest of the world. Twenty-four hours earlier, I spotted the ICPC chairman making his way through the corridors leading to the President's office for the umpteenth time.