Shadow Play: Critics Accuse Tinubu of Governing with 'Phantom Agencies'

The government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is currently defined by a disturbing and self-destructive pattern of administrative chaos in appointments to consequential public office positions. This disarray, which signals a profound lack of control within the government and the influence of a shadowy, disorganised, feuding, and mercenary cabal in the Presidential Villa, has elevated the administrative anarchy pioneered by Muhammadu Buhari to an even higher degree. There is now a recurring pattern where the Presidency repeatedly announces appointments without prior verification of the legal office, the incumbent's status, the supervising minister's knowledge, or the Secretary to the Government of the Federation's capacity or willingness to implement the decision. This results in a government where press releases conflict with official appointment letters, agencies announce presidential decisions of doubtful origin, and incumbents openly disregard publicly announced replacements, fostering an atmosphere where fraudulent presidential instruments can pass through multiple layers of the Nigerian federal bureaucracy.

While Buhari’s administrative infirmity was primarily expressed through lethargy, vacancy, and spectacular absent-mindedness—such as taking over five months to constitute his first cabinet in 2015, waiting until December 2017 to announce board members for agencies dissolved in July 2015 (with at least eight appointees already deceased), and appointing Tobias Chukwuemeka Okwuru to the Federal Character Commission two months after his death in 2020—Tinubu's approach is distinctly different. Buhari often forgot to appoint people, a state once characterised as "ungovernance." In contrast, Tinubu appoints, unappoints, and reappoints individuals with nervous rapidity.

Numerous examples highlight this instability. In 2023, Maryam Shetty discovered her ministerial nomination had vanished upon arriving at the National Assembly for screening. The Presidency replaced Niger Delta Development Commission nominees within 24 hours of naming them. Kashim Imam’s appointment as chairman of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency lasted less than a week. In August 2025, the presidency reappointed Muheeba Dankaka as chair of the Federal Character Commission at 6:35 p.m. and then announced Ayo Omidiran as chair at 10:44 p.m., resulting in one commission acquiring two presidentially appointed chairs within four hours. The Nigerian Television Authority provided an even more dramatic case: Tinubu, through his official spokesman, appointed Rotimi Pedro as director-general in August 2025 while Salihu Dembos still had an uncompleted tenure. Two weeks later, the presidency reversed itself and restored the incumbents. Premium Times reported that the supervising information minister learned of the original appointments through the media, tracing the upheaval to a presidential aide who bypassed the minister with spurious allegations, illustrating how access has seemingly become authority within the system.

This pattern continued with NIPOST in October 2023, where Tola Odeyemi was appointed postmaster-general with immediate effect, only for NIPOST’s own communications channels to announce the reinstatement of Sunday Adepoju. This led to workers barricading the headquarters against Odeyemi before she eventually assumed office. The current imbroglio at the Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA) perfectly encapsulates this absurdity. On June 27, 2026, Abdulrazak Sa’ad Namdas was announced as the agency’s new director-general, replacing Dakorinama Alabo George, who was said to have resigned. However, Namdas reportedly still awaits his formal appointment letter from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, while George denies resigning, claims his announced replacement was an error, and continues to act as head, even meeting the finance minister. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga’s two-word response, "Namdas stays," further confuses the situation. Adding to the complexity, the BCDA Act creates the office of executive secretary, while the presidency refers to the office as director-general, a semantic confusion that carries significant fiscal consequences. One agency now has two titles, two claimants, and three divergent sources of authority: a public announcement, a formal instrument, and administrative possession.

While a president holds the prerogative to hire and fire appointees, state authority necessitates legible procedure. An appointment must exist in law and administration through an authenticated instrument, a clear effective date, a lawful office, and an orderly transfer of power. A press release unmoored from these elements becomes risible political theatre, and repeated reversals degrade presidential words into provisional rumours. The suspicion of a "cabal" arises from this observable pattern, suggesting that Tinubu has lost his monopoly over the voice and force of his own presidency. Competing nodes around him appear capable of originating, obstructing, and annulling decisions, making his government speak in tongues, each claiming the presidential seal.

The scandal of the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, or PFIPC, becomes intelligible within this administrative Babel. The presidency claims Adeniyi Adeyemi fabricated an appointment as director-general of a fictitious presidential agency. Yet, this phantom agency managed to acquire a ₦1.3 billion line in the 2026 budget, occupied federal office space, met foreign diplomats, and secured an approved staff establishment after official verification seemingly failed. The Central Bank even opened dollar and pound accounts for it on the Accountant-General’s mandate, although these accounts remained empty and inactive. While calling Adeyemi a con man explains his intention, his success diagnoses the sad, cabal-infested, fraud-prone, and dysfunctional pathology of the Tinubu government. A solitary impostor cannot navigate the Office of the SGF, Head of Service, Budget Office, Accountant-General, Central Bank, and diplomatic system unless verification gates have collapsed or helpful insiders have opened them, indicating that PFIPC became a government agency through serial bureaucratic authentication, where fiction accumulated official stamps until it acquired the material attributes of fact.

To reverse this debilitating trend, Nigeria can draw lessons from former colonisers like Britain, which subjects many public appointments to a published Governance Code and oversight by an independent Commissioner for Public Appointments. Nigeria urgently needs a publicly searchable presidential appointments register detailing the statutory office, appointee, tenure, effective date, instrument number, and current status. Furthermore, every presidential council and every entity in the federal budget since 2023 deserves a forensic audit. The National Assembly should trace who inserted PFIPC into the budget and who validated each stage of its bureaucratic incarnation. The PFIPC only surfaced because its counterfeit authority collided with the real Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission. The question remains: how many silent phantoms flourish because they have avoided such a collision, how many presidential appointments originate from people Tinubu cannot identify, and how many announced decisions die inside the SGF’s office while their ghosts roam the news? A government that cannot authenticate its own voice invites impostors to speak for it, and a president whose appointees cannot tell whether they have been hired, fired, or duplicated presides over a dysfunctional, self-dealing banana republic where his authority has become divisible, tradable, and deniable.