Accountability or apologia: The republic demands an independent panel

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“When institutions conspire to wear darkness as raiment, only the unflinching light of inquiry can restore the Republic to itself.”

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On June 25, 2026, the Nigerian public square was arrested.

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Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew did not proffer conjecture. He proffered accusation. His pronouncement: “I stand before you under a cloud of institutional denial”, was less the grievance of an individual than the autopsy of a system.

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What unspooled, thereafter, transcended personality. It was a cartography of institutional decay: a council alleged to be phantasmal yet inscribed in the 2026 Appropriation Act; a budgetary provision of N1.3bn ascribed to an entity the Presidency disowns; domiciliary and TSA arrangements purportedly incubated within the Central Bank; and insinuations of pecuniary exaction tethered to appointments at the very citadel of executive authority.

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These are not ephemera to be dispelled by communiqués. They are lacerations upon the corpus of our governance. They interrogate the probity of our fiscal architecture, the inviolability of public institutions, and the ethical fibre of those anointed to steward the commonwealth.

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History bequeaths us a compass. In 2017, a Secretary to the Government of the Federation was bidden to step aside pending investigation. That directive affirmed an elemental republican axiom: that in a democracy, public confidence must always outweigh private convenience, and that no office, however proximate to power, can claim immunity from scrutiny.

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The present moment bears a graver import. The allegations do not graze the periphery of government. They brush the Office of the Chief of Staff — the fulcrum upon which executive coherence turns. They brush the Office of the Secretary to the Government — the custodian of establishment, records, and bureaucratic orthodoxy.

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Where suspicion festers around such offices, the administration’s moral authority is attenuated, and the covenant between government and governed is fractured.

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We do not impugn the diligence of the National Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee, nor the mandate of the ICPC. We merely observe that they are necessary, yet insufficient.

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How can the executive be expected to adjudicate its own nerve centre with dispassion? How can institutions alleged to have midwifed this phantom — the Budget Office, the Central Bank, the Head of Service- now preside over their own exoneration? How can a legislature that once shared chamber, caucus, and comity with the principal subject now claim the garb of impartiality? Would fire be fair if asked to probe arson?

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Beyond conflict lies scope. The inquiry cannot be circumscribed to an alleged inducement.

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The Republic must ask: By what sleight do chimerical agencies insinuate themselves into our budget? Who traffics in public office? Who lends the imprimatur of state to illegitimacy?

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If this administration aspires to be remembered on the side of rectitude, it must choose illumination over obfuscation, and transparency over equivocation.

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We, therefore, respectfully implore President Bola Tinubu to:

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Place the Chief of Staff on administrative leave, with emoluments intact — not as a sanction, but as prophylaxis for truth and preservation of evidence.

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Direct the SGF to declassify and publish within seven days all records about establishment, office allocation, and circulars relating to the PFIPC.

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Constitute, within seven days, an independent panel of inquiry to be presided over by a retired justice of the Supreme Court, of unimpeachable renown, and comprising nominees of the Nigerian Bar Association, Nigerian Labour Congress, Nigerian Union of Journalists, Transparency International, YIAGA Africa and two forensic auditors of international repute. Let no politician or serving appointee stain its composition.

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Empower it with a sweeping mandate to audit the entirety of the 2026 budget for extra-statutory entities, and to deliver, within sixty days, an unexpurgated report to both the Presidency and the Nigerian people.

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Mr. President, history offers but two garments: apologia or accountability. The former offers the anaesthetic of denial. The latter offers the architecture of legitimacy.

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Nigeria does not seek a media inquisition. Nigeria seeks due process.

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Nigeria does not seek retribution. Nigeria seeks veritas.

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Let it be inscribed in the annals of this Republic that under your watch, the law knew no favourites.

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Let truth, unbowed by trepidation and unsullied by patronage, be our enduring monument.

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Fidelis Ikengwa writes from Bariga, Lagos

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