Meson can't find accountsservice when it is clearly installed

I am trying to build the pantheon elementary greeter on Ubuntu but it keeps failing at the build stage since it can't find accountsservice. But accountsservice is clearly installed.. I am following the build instructions given on the page.

OS Info:

Linux newbie-VirtualBox 5.3.0-40-generic #32~18.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 3 14:05:59 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Meson build command line:

meson build --prefix=/usr

Meson output:

newbie@newbie-VirtualBox:~/greeter$ meson build --prefix=/usr
The Meson build system
Version: 0.45.1
Source dir: /home/newbie/greeter
Build dir: /home/newbie/greeter/build
Build type: native build
Project name: io.elementary.greeter
Native C compiler: cc (gcc 7.4.0 "cc (Ubuntu 7.4.0-1ubuntu1~18.04.1) 7.4.0")
Native Vala compiler: valac (valac 0.40.17)
Build machine cpu family: x86_64
Build machine cpu: x86_64
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (0.29.1)
Native dependency glib-2.0 found: YES 2.56.4

src/meson.build:1:0: ERROR: Native dependency 'accountsservice' not found

A full log can be found at /home/newbie/greeter/build/meson-logs/meson-log.txt

Output of /home/newbie/greeter/build/meson-logs/meson-log.txt

Code:
 class MesonSanityCheck : Object { }
Compiler stdout:
 Compilation succeeded - 1 warning(s)

Compiler stderr:
 warning: --output and -o have no effect when -C or --ccode is set

Native Vala compiler: valac (valac 0.40.17)
Build machine cpu family: x86_64
Build machine cpu: x86_64
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (0.29.1)
Determining dependency 'glib-2.0' with pkg-config executable '/usr/bin/pkg-config'
Native dependency glib-2.0 found: YES 2.56.4
Determining dependency 'accountsservice' with pkg-config executable '/usr/bin/pkg-config'

src/meson.build:1:0: ERROR: Native dependency 'accountsservice' not found

The strangest part is that accountsservice is already installed to its latest version.

newbie@newbie-VirtualBox:~/greeter$ sudo apt install accountsservice 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
accountsservice is already the newest version (0.6.45-1ubuntu1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded.

Also if I do a locate accountsservice

/usr/lib/accountsservice
/usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libaccountsservice.so.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libaccountsservice.so.0.0.0
/usr/share/doc/accountsservice
/usr/share/doc/gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0
/usr/share/doc/libaccountsservice0
/usr/share/doc/accountsservice/README
/usr/share/doc/accountsservice/TODO
/usr/share/doc/accountsservice/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/accountsservice/copyright
/usr/share/doc/gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libaccountsservice0/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/libaccountsservice0/copyright
/var/lib/dpkg/info/accountsservice.conffiles
/var/lib/dpkg/info/accountsservice.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/accountsservice.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/accountsservice.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/accountsservice.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/accountsservice.prerm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libaccountsservice0:amd64.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libaccountsservice0:amd64.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libaccountsservice0:amd64.shlibs
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libaccountsservice0:amd64.symbols
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libaccountsservice0:amd64.triggers

What is going on ? Why can't meson find accountsservice when it is clearly present ?