The senior special assistant to President Bola Tinubu on media and publicity, Temitope Ajayi, has described the scandal surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) as a pure scam.

This was just as he disclosed that a missing telephone number on a State House letterhead exposed the forged appointment letter used to run a fake federal agency from the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja.

Speaking during an interview on Arise Television on Friday, Ajayi said the genuine letterhead carries no such number, contrary to the one brandished by Adeniyi Adeyemi, the man at the centre of the controversy.

“On the genuine State House letterhead, there is no contact telephone number. On the purported appointment letter, however, there is one,” Ajayi said.

He said anybody familiar with how the Presidency operates would immediately spot the discrepancy.

“So anybody who understands how the system works will know this is a pure scam and a forged document,” he said.

Ajayi insisted that presidential appointments do not originate from the office of the Chief of Staff.

“You have been covering the State House for a number of years, and we all know that the Chief of Staff does not make appointments. It is the President who makes appointments into agencies or extra-ministerial positions,” he said.

He explained that the Chief of Staff’s role was limited to conveying the President’s approval to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who then issues the appointment letter to the successful candidate.

“What the Chief of Staff does is convey the President’s approval to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, informing them that the President has approved or made a particular appointment. It is the office of the SGF that issues the appointment letter to appointees,” he said.

Ajayi said it was procedurally wrong for anyone to brandish a letter of appointment purportedly originating directly from the Chief of Staff’s office.

“So, procedurally, it is even wrong for anyone to go about brandishing a letter of appointment originating from the office of the Chief of Staff. That is the first red flag,” he said.

Asked whether internal collaborators may have helped Adeyemi operate inside government institutions, Ajayi did not rule it out.

“Well, it’s not impossible, because even the audacity to go and operate inside the government’s federal secretariat is enough to suggest that something could have gone wrong at some point,” he said.

Adeyemi is facing an eight-count charge bordering on conspiracy, forgery and impersonation before the Federal High Court, Abuja, alongside two others identified as Femi and Anu, who are said to be at large.

He was arrested on October 27, 2025, at his office in the Federal Secretariat Complex after a petition to the Department of State Services and the police over the scheme.