RAINThe PFIPC saga is not a failure of political leadership — and it is not an indictment of government or of the civil service as a whole. It is a heist pulled off by a few bad eggs exploiting loopholes in the analogue communication of the machinery of state. I met the same side door myself, thirteen years ago.
Not the politicians. Not the whole service.
Before anyone reduces this to partisan point-scoring: this is not about President Tinubu, his regime or his leadership. And let me be equally clear the other way — this is not an accusation against the civil service as an institution, nor against the millions of honest officers who keep the state running. Not everyone is a suspect. A heist needs only a few insiders and one unlocked door.
That door is analogue communication. Paper letters, physical files, rubber stamps, folio numbers — a chain of custody that cannot be audited, where a document's journey leaves no fingerprint. A man allegedly operated a phantom council from the Federal Secretariat for over a year — office space, processed letters, diplomatic meetings, even a ₦1.3 billion line in the published federal budget.
And before we turn on the legislators: budgets are not written line by line, nor scrutinised line by line. Some spending is deemed statutory; some is waved through as mere administrative cost. A phantom line does not need a conspiracy to survive — it only needs a system with no registry to check it against.
We already know this pattern by another name: ghost workers. Nigeria has been purging payrolls of names that draw salaries but do not exist for decades. What we are looking at now is the same trick, taken to a graduated level — not a ghost worker this time, but an entire ghost agency.
A few bad eggs. One analogue loophole. That is all a heist needs.
I met this door in 2013
As a young graduate, through my then company YSTN — Yula Security Technologies Network — I wrote a proposal for a public-private partnership on citizen emergency rescue, between YSTN, the Nigeria Police and the Federal Government. I carried it myself to the gate of the Presidential Villa, addressed to then-President Goodluck Jonathan through the office of the then Chief of Staff.
Then a message came, from a private email address — not a State House address: "We have received your letter. We are looking into it. One of my staff will contact you."
Then came the demand: money, to "encourage" a favourable report. I asked for proof. He sent a photograph of my own proposal — stamped RECEIVED by the Office of the Chief of Staff. A document I submitted at the gate of Aso Rock and nowhere else.
I am certain that message never came from the Chief of Staff. Somewhere along the file's journey, someone inside photographed it and passed it to a scammer to impersonate his office. The document went in through the front gate — and its contents walked out through a side door. Thirteen years later, only the scale has changed. Perhaps the person who photographed my proposal has simply graduated.
Plug the loopholes
Loopholes are an engineering problem, and engineering problems have engineering solutions.
Verified domains only. Official correspondence exists only on government domains. Anything else is void on arrival.
Access-logged documents. Every file movement leaves a fingerprint. A photograph at a desk becomes a name in a log.
Signed appointments. Cryptographically signed letters, anchored on tamper-proof ledgers, verifiable by anyone in seconds.
A public agency registry. So any budget officer can ask the only question that matters: which law created this body?
Digital skills as a condition. Cybersecurity training before anyone handles government records — not after the scandal.
This is not theory. At RAIN we built Open Secret Communication, an encrypted solution for high-level public communication. With it, even printed documents can be encrypted and the paper originals shredded — leaving nothing on a desk to photograph, and nothing in a file to leak. I demonstrated it to the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Her Excellency Amina J. Mohammed, during her 2021 visit. The technology exists. It is Nigerian. It is ready.
I hereby submit my name
For the office of Chief Technology Officer of the State House, I, Dr. Olusola Sayeed Ayoola, hereby submit my name — this time electronically, with an encrypted, verifiable trail.
From day one I will implement workflow automation, end-to-end encryption, access-logged document management and full audit trails across official communication — and that side door closes for good.
A country that cannot verify its own paperwork will keep meeting its own ghost. Same door. Time to lock it — with technology.
First published as an interactive essay at study.rainigeria.com/thesaga.