Oops moment at the highest level of the civil service — the Head of Service just admitted her office was fooled by fake State House documents.

So, this whole drama around the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) just took a new twist.

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack, has come clean before the House of Representatives. In her words, due diligence *was not* thoroughly done before her office recognised the purported council.

She told the ad hoc committee probing the alleged operation of the council that her office accepted responsibility for the lapse. According to her, they relied on documents that looked authentic and didn’t put them through proper verification.

Why? She said the papers came bearing the State House logo and what appeared to be a familiar signature, so there was no reason to doubt them at the time.

But here’s where it unravelled — later checks against genuine State House correspondence, plus police forensic findings, confirmed the signatures were actually different.

Walson-Jack has now assured lawmakers that her office will review its internal verification processes to make them more robust and fraud-proof going forward.

Meanwhile, there was more drama at the hearing. The Inspector-General of Police, Tunji Disu, informed the committee that the self-acclaimed Director-General of the purported council, Mr Adeniyi Adeyemi, couldn’t show up because of a subsisting court order.

Disu, who was represented by Deputy Commissioner of Police Olufemi Akinola, said Adeyemi would only be able to appear upon an order of a court of competent jurisdiction.

The committee has now adjourned further sitting on the matter till next week.

Credit: cbinews.tv

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