A Stitch In Time

Once again, another alleged fake agency has unravelled. The National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office, operating from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF), was uncovered by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) during its investigation into the alleged Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council. The President subsequently ordered the arrest of its alleged promoter, George Buchi Nwabueze, and the suspension of three Permanent Secretaries pending investigation.

The case is troubling because the organisation reportedly had office space within the OSGF complex and communicated with state governments, seeking nominations, collaboration, funding and other forms of support. Some correspondence reportedly carried the imprimatur of the Presidency, while an appointment letter shared by Nwabueze purportedly indicated that the project office operated under the OSGF.

However, Nwabueze has rejected the description of the organisation as a fake agency, insisting that it is a special project rather than a federal agency and claiming that the Made-in-Nigeria initiative dates back to 2010. The investigation will therefore have to establish its precise legal status, who authorised its activities and presence within the OSGF, and whether it had a valid government mandate.

Whatever the ultimate findings, the episode exposes a serious institutional vulnerability. Nigeria needs a system in which no government department, agency, council, project office or intervention programme can simply look official. Its official status must be independently verifiable.

Stranger Danger

The government deserves credit for acting once the latest matter came to light. But Nigeria must avoid the familiar cycle in which outrage follows discovery, arrests or suspensions follow outrage, and then the system quietly returns to business as usual. The recent case emerged from an investigation into another alleged fictitious government body. That recurrence should be the warning bell.

The earlier Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council case reportedly demonstrated how an organisation could acquire an astonishing appearance of legitimacy, including interactions with government officials and even an allocation in the 2026 federal budget. If one case exposes a loophole, the appropriate response is to close it. If two cases expose the same weakness, it becomes a systemic problem.

The Federal Government should therefore go beyond individual prosecutions and conduct a comprehensive verification audit of entities operating under or alongside the OSGF and, indeed, across the Federal Government.

Every extra-ministerial department, special project, council, task force, intervention office and similar body should produce its establishing authority, current mandate, leadership structure, source of funding and evidence of continued government approval.

Where there is uncertainty, the institution should be flagged pending verification. Where mandates overlap, government should rationalise them. Where a temporary project has effectively become a permanent bureaucracy, government should determine whether it deserves formal institutionalisation or should be wound up.

And where an entity is found to be fictitious, consequences should extend beyond its alleged promoter to any official whose negligence, collusion or failure of due diligence allowed it to flourish.

Government is built on authority. A letter on official stationery, bearing the right insignia and reference number, emanating from a government complex and signed by someone described as a Permanent Secretary naturally commands attention. For a citizen, state governor, investor or even another government department, the presumption is that such communication is genuine. That presumption is precisely why institutional verification matters.

According to reports, the National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office established a network that included state coordinators and wrote to several state governments. One reported letter to Edo State even contained payment instructions for participation in an event abroad.

A government institution should never derive legitimacy merely from its location, letterhead, website, logo or the title of the person communicating on its behalf. Legitimacy must be traceable to a legal instrument, executive decision, Act of the National Assembly, appropriation or another clearly identifiable source of authority. Nigeria’s public service therefore needs a simple principle: if an institution cannot be verified, it should not be treated as an institution.

A National Register of Government Institutions

One practical solution is the creation of a single, authoritative National Register of Government Institutions and Extra-Ministerial Departments. This should be a publicly accessible, continuously updated digital platform controlled by the appropriate central government authorities.

Every ministry, department, agency, council, commission, special project office, intervention office and extra-ministerial department should have a unique institutional identification number. The register should state the legal instrument establishing it, supervising authority, approved functions, head of the institution, physical address, official website, budgetary status and the date its mandate was created or renewed.

Temporary bodies should not acquire the permanence of conventional agencies through administrative drift. A project created for a specific purpose and period should have an expiry date. If government wishes to renew it, the renewal should be documented and publicly reflected in the register. If it expires, its official status should lapse unless renewed by the competent authority.

Verification would then become simple. A state governor receiving a letter from an unfamiliar federal office should be able to enter its identification number into the register and immediately determine whether the institution exists, who supervises it and whether the signatory has authority to issue the communication.

The same principle should apply to citizens, foreign governments, investors, development partners and financial institutions. It is better to invest modestly in such a system now than spend vastly more investigating fraud after it has penetrated the public service.

There should also be an unambiguous chain-of-authorisation protocol. No office should be allocated space within a federal government complex without documentary evidence establishing its legal status and the authority under which the space is granted. The same should apply to government letterheads, insignia, email addresses, websites, press releases and other symbols of state authority.

A central verification code could be introduced for government correspondence. Every official letter could carry a digitally verifiable reference identifying the originating institution and confirming that the signatory is authorised to issue it.

Such a system would make impersonation considerably harder while creating an audit trail showing who approved an institution, authorised its office accommodation and granted access to government facilities.

A Stitch in Time

Administrative procedures may be seen as cumbersome obstacles to getting things done. But the absence of sensible procedures can be even more costly. A verification protocol is not bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. It is an institutional seatbelt. The Federal Government should treat these discoveries as an opportunity to build a permanent firewall against institutional impersonation.

Before an entity is recognised, verify its authority. Before it occupies government premises, verify its approval. Before it receives public funds, verify its legal and budgetary status. Before another government treats its correspondence as official, provide a simple means of authentication. Before an official speaks in the name of the Federal Government, make it possible to confirm that he or she has the authority to do so. And, above all, publish the information. Transparency is one of the cheapest forms of prevention available to government.

The irony is that the Made-in-Nigeria idea itself represents the kind of national aspiration government should ordinarily be proud to promote. That makes the controversy even more unfortunate. When the boundary between a genuine government institution and an unauthorised one becomes blurred, legitimate programmes suffer alongside fraudulent ones.

Nigeria cannot afford more reputational damage because the integrity of the machinery of government is now at stake; but a stitch in time saves nine.