The Buhari Media Office (BMO), an advocacy group promoting the legacy of former President Muhammadu Buhari, has distanced the late former President from the controversy surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) and the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC), insisting that neither body was connected to his administration.
 
In a statement yesterday, the BMO said that the late Buhari did not establish the alleged fictitious agencies, PFIPC and PEAC, which were reportedly allocated N1.3 billion in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
 
According to the statement, what former President Buhari created was the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC). At inception, it operated from the second floor of the Federal Secretariat, in offices designated for the Chief Economic Adviser to the President, a position that remained vacant until much later.
 
“Under the last administration, the PEAC had no budget line. Its activities were funded through presidential approvals granted to the Minister of Finance. The PEAC was an ad-hoc part-time advisory body comprising professional economists and financial experts who provided economic advice to the President under the chairmanship of Prof. Doyin Salami before he was eventually appointed Chief Economic Adviser,” the statement stated.
 
The group said the Council’s Vice Chairman was Prof. Mahmuda Sagagi, while its members included Prof. Ode Ojowu, Dr Shehu Yahaya, Dr Iyabo Masha, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, Mr Bismarck Rewane and Dr Mohammed Adaya Salisu (Senior Special Assistant to the President on Development Policy), who served as Secretary.
 
It added that members of the Council received no salaries, although office expenses were met by the Permanent Secretary, State House, subject to presidential approval.

The BMO further stated that the Tinubu administration neither formally dissolved the Buhari-appointed PEAC nor reappointed its members after assuming office in 2023.

Eearlier, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, had explained to the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the establishment and budgetary provisions of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PEAC/PFIPC) how the controversial Council found its way into the 2026 federal budget, insisting that the Budget Office neither created the body nor approved its establishment but merely cost its personnel requirement based on official government instruments issued by relevant authorities.
 
Yakubu, however, maintained that although the National Assembly appropriated N1,302,978,783 for the Council, not one kobo was released or spent, stressing that the statutory conditions required before public funds could be disbursed were never met.
 
The director-general, while resenting the Budget Office’s position before the committee, traced the Council’s institutional origin to the PEAC inaugurated by former President Buhari on October 9, 2019.
 
He said that before the Budget Office became involved, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation had assigned the Council an administrative budget code, giving it an identity within the Federal Government’s budget architecture.
 
According to him, without the code, a spending body cannot be recognised for budgeting, appropriated as a spending unit or subsequently participate in the expenditure process.
 
Yakubu further disclosed that an authorised establishment and a recruitment waiver had already been issued by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, while the relevant public service salary structure was also in place before the Council sought budgetary provision.
 
He stressed that those approvals predated and were separate from the Council’s request for funding.
 
Yakubu disclosed that although the Council requested N3,850,935,000 as personnel cost, the Budget Office rejected the figure because it was unsupported and instead carried out an independent computation using only the authorised establishment, approved recruitment waiver, applicable public service salary structure and the established personnel-cost methodology.