Fake Agencies Inside Government: Who Is Guarding The Nigerian State?

A Nigerian comedian once joked, at the start of the year, that he was thinking of a side hustle to survive this economy. He ran through the usual suspects: POS business, drop-shipping, maybe content creation since everybody suddenly wants to be a content creator.

Then he paused, looked at the camera, and said the real money-spinner was to open his own police station. Just like that. Rent a shop, paint it blue, yellow and green stripes, hang “DIVISIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS” on the signboard, and start collecting statements and bail money. The crowd laughed because it sounded mad. Nobody just wakes up and opens a police station in a country with actual security architecture.

Except, well, this is Nigeria of 2026, and the joke has quietly relocated from the comedy stage to the front pages. This time, we don’t even bother with opening a police station. We go for something bigger.

Apparently, building a whole federal agency can now be somebody’s side hustle. The latest being the “National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office.” It somehow located right inside the actual Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Not somewhere on the outskirts of Nyanya or Gwagwa.

Inside OSGF, the place where government talks to government. If Nigeria was a body, OSGF is somewhere close to the spine, and this man allegedly grew a whole tumor there and nobody noticed until ICPC came sniffing.

Amazingly, the guy has more names than Evans Ewerem. George Nathan. George Nathan Nwabueze. Hon. George Buchi Nwabueze. Prince George Buchi Nwabueze. Plain George Nwabueze. Five names, one man, all pointing at the same address. In banking, that kind of behavior gets your account flagged in two minutes. In OSGF, apparently, it gets you an office space.

Look, I’ve laughed at a lot of Nigerian nonsense in my time, there is a joke Nigerians often make: “if Nigeria is explained to you and you understand it, perhaps you are the mad one.”

But I want us to sit down small and ask the question everybody is dodging: who exactly is guarding this country?

Because a fake agency does not float through the air like harmattan dust and land quietly inside government premises. Somebody signed something. Somebody nodded. Somebody looked at “Prince George Buchi Nwabueze, Director-General of a project office nobody authorized” and said “oya, take that office space near photocopy room.”

That person has a name. That person has a salary account. That person is still, as I type this, probably eating amala for lunch in Abuja while the rest of us argue on social media.

And this is not even the first one, o. This is the fourth. Fourth! PFIPC first, then the FCT Investment Promotion Agency, then the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency and Public-Private Partnership, and now this Made-in-Nigeria brand office wearing patriotic colours like it’s here to save local content.

The four entities have indeed been identified by ICPC as fictitious entities, but they were not all discovered in exactly the same manner or at the same time. That’s not one bad apple. That’s a whole orchard, and somebody has been quietly cultivating it inside the machinery of government

Government has responded the way government always responds, with the reflex choreography we’ve all memorized. Three permanent secretaries have been suspended pending investigation. That is a necessary administrative response. But suspension is not accountability. The real test is what the investigation eventually establishes and what happens to those found responsible.

Everybody claps. Newspapers run the headline. By next Wednesday, another scandal will arrive, Nigerians will move on and this one will disappear into the Nigerian archive of things we were angry about for 48 hours.

I’m not saying the arrest is nothing. E better pass nothing, honestly. At least somebody is being dragged somewhere. But arresting the man who impersonated a Director-General is like arresting the mosquito after it has already finished sucking your blood and dropped malaria for you free of charge. The mosquito wasn’t the real problem. The open window was. The missing net was. And nobody, not one press briefing, has told us who forgot to close the window at OSGF.

Because make no mistake, this isn’t really a story about one fraudster with five names and big English titles. This is a story about a federal bureaucracy that apparently cannot tell its legitimate institutions from strangers who arrive with confidence and well starched white agbada.

If a man can allegedly forge a presidential appointment letter, obtain access to an old Presidential Economic Advisory Council office, open bank accounts and create multiple agencies before anyone blinks, he did not outsmart Nigeria. Nigeria simply wasn’t checking IDs at the door.

Atiku Abubakar has asked the only question worth asking: who granted access? Who recognized him? For once, self-interest and public interest are singing the same tune, and the Presidency owes us the answer regardless of who’s asking.

Until somebody senior enough to have actually opened that door faces something more than a quiet suspension letter, that comedian’s joke remains the most honest political commentary in the country.

Open your own agency, borrow one big title, walk in like you own the place, chances are, in today’s Nigeria, nobody at the gate will even ask “oga, who sent you?”

The real scandal was never the fake agency. It’s that nobody’s guarding the front door of the Nigerian state and we only find out each time by accident.

Young Ozogwu is an Abuja-based public commentator and media executive. You can contact him at young.ozogwu@gmail.com