• Says NASS appropriated N1.3b but no kobo was released

The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, has said the inclusion of the controversial Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) in the 2026 Appropriation Act stemmed from official government records linked to the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) inaugurated under former President Muhammadu Buhari.

Yakubu disclosed this on Friday during his appearance before the Yusuf Gagdi-led House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the council.

Yakubu maintained that despite the appropriation of N1.302 billion for the council in the 2026 budget, not a single kobo was released, as the statutory conditions required for expenditure were never met.

Explaining how the council found its way into the budget, the Budget Office boss said the institutional origin of the PEAC dated back to October 9, 2019, when former President Buhari inaugurated the advisory body to provide economic policy advice to his administration.

According to him, before the Budget Office received a request for budgetary provision, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation had already assigned an administrative budget code to the council, while the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation had issued an authorised establishment and recruitment waiver.

He said those official instruments enabled the Budget Office to assess the fiscal implications of the request, but did not amount to creating a new government agency.

“The Budget Office did not create the Council. It did not assign the code. It did not approve the establishment. It did not grant the recruitment waiver. It acted on documents issued through recognised government channels and performed the task for which it is responsible, which was to determine the fiscal consequence of those approvals,” Yakubu said.

He disclosed that although the council requested N3.85 billion as personnel cost, the Budget Office rejected the estimate and independently computed a personnel requirement of N802.98 million using the authorised establishment, approved recruitment waiver and applicable public service salary structure.

Yakubu said the amount formed part of the Executive Budget proposal and was subsequently appropriated by the National Assembly.

He, however, stressed that appropriation alone did not entitle the council to receive public funds.

“An appropriation is authority in law to make provision for expenditure. It is not a cheque. It is not a warrant. It is not cash released from the treasury,” he said.

According to him, the Budget Office never issued the mandatory Financial Clearance required before recruitment, payroll enrolment and salary payments could commence because the necessary statutory conditions were not fulfilled.

He explained that after the 2026 Appropriation Bill received presidential assent, the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission had yet to certify the council’s proposed staffing and remuneration structure.

“There was no financial clearance. There was no lawful recruitment. There was no payroll enrolment. There was no salary payment,” he said.

Yakubu told the committee that personnel appropriations are paid directly to verified employees through the Federal Government payroll system rather than as lump sums to agencies.

“As a result, not one kobo of the personnel provision could lawfully have been drawn, and not one kobo was drawn,” he stated.

He also disclosed that the council never accessed its N200 million overhead allocation, noting that overhead releases require treasury warrants and cash backing from the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

According to him, once questions emerged over the legal status of the council in June 2026, the Budget Office formally notified the Ministry of Finance and the Accountant-General to withhold all payment instruments relating to the agency.

Yakubu added that the council’s N300 million capital allocation also remained untouched because “no procurement process was initiated, no Ministerial Tenders Board approved any project, no Bureau of Public Procurement Certificate of No Objection was issued, and no treasury warrant or cash backing followed.”

“The legal path from appropriation to expenditure was broken at every material point,” he said.

He argued that rather than exposing weaknesses in Nigeria’s public finance system, the PFIPC episode demonstrated that existing financial safeguards worked as intended.

“What has been described in some quarters as institutional weakness is better understood as institutional resilience. The controls did not discover a loss after the event; they prevented the event. They kept the money from moving,” he said.

The House Committee is investigating how the PFIPC, which the Presidency has said was never established by the Federal Government, secured recognition across public institutions and was appropriated N1.302 billion in the 2026 budget.

The probe has already heard from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, which admitted a lapse in verifying documents submitted by the council before issuing an authorised establishment; and the Central Bank of Nigeria, which disclosed it opened two foreign currency accounts for the council on the directive of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, though the accounts remained dormant.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also told lawmakers it reported the council and its self-acclaimed Director-General, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, to the Office of the National Security Adviser in October 2025 after identifying discrepancies in documents submitted by the organisation.