There is something deeply disturbing about Nigeria’s latest fake agency revelations.
Not simply because individuals allegedly created organisations that did not legally exist, but because some of these organisations reportedly looked so official that they operated within government spaces, interacted with public officials and presented themselves to Nigerians as legitimate institutions.
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The latest revelation involving the National Brands Development and Made-in-Nigeria Special Project Office should therefore provoke more than outrage. It should provoke serious questions about how Nigeria’s government machinery works.
The organisation reportedly presented itself as a Federal Government initiative promoting Nigerian products, supporting businesses and driving local production.
Its website carried an impressive mandate and portrayed the project as connected to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
Yet the ICPC says the organisation was fictitious and had been allocated office space within the OSGF without presidential authorisation.
That is where the story becomes bigger than one alleged fake agency.
Earlier, the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) had already exposed worrying gaps in institutional verification.
It reportedly had an office, website, social media presence and even appeared in the 2026 budget before authorities raised questions about its legitimacy. An ICPC investigation subsequently recommended prosecution of its alleged promoter.
The obvious question is: How does a fake agency get close enough to government to look real?
And perhaps an even more uncomfortable question: How many other organisations are operating under impressive names that Nigerians assume are backed by government?
Government agencies are not private businesses that can simply be created with a website, logo, office and impressive title. Their existence should be traceable to legislation, executive authority or an established government process. That verification should be straightforward.
Nigeria needs a central and publicly accessible register containing every legitimate federal agency, commission, council, programme and government-owned institution, including its legal foundation, mandate, leadership and official contact channels.
The public should not have to become detectives before determining whether a government agency is real.
The latest discoveries also place a responsibility on journalists. A government-sounding name is not evidence of government legitimacy.
Before publishing statements from unfamiliar agencies or giving their officials public visibility, journalists must verify their mandate and authority.
But ultimately, this is about institutional trust.
When a supposedly fake organisation can acquire an office within a government complex or present itself as a national programme, the damage goes beyond money. It damages citizens’ confidence in the institutions that are supposed to serve them.
The Made-in-Nigeria campaign deserves serious government support. Nigerian businesses deserve legitimate institutions that can promote local production, investment and innovation.
What they do not deserve is an organisation borrowing the language of national development while allegedly operating without lawful authority.
Nigeria must therefore move from discovering fake agencies after they have become established to preventing them from becoming established in the first place.
Because the most dangerous fake agency is not necessarily the one that looks suspicious. It is the one that looks official enough for nobody to ask questions.
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