The director-general of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, has defended his agency's handling of funds earmarked for the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, telling lawmakers that no money was actually disbursed despite the N1.32 billion allocation in the 2026 budget. Yakubu appeared before a House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating how the council received funding without proper legal establishment.
He stressed that the Budget Office did not create the council, approve its setup, or authorise its hiring. "The Budget Office did not create the council.
It did not assign its budget code. It did not approve its establishment.
It did not grant its recruitment waiver," he told the committee.
According to Yakubu, his agency simply assessed the financial impact of decisions made by other government bodies, as required by law. The office received official documents and calculated their budgetary implications, he explained.
The PFIPC had requested N3.8 billion for personnel costs, but the Budget Office rejected that figure and produced its own calculation of N802.98 million based on the approved staffing structure and standard civil service pay scales. "That calculation produced N802,978,783.
This was not a concession to the council. It was the Budget Office's own fiscal proposal," Yakubu said.
Critically, the director-general revealed that personnel provisions never translated into actual spending because his office withheld the mandatory financial clearance required before any recruitment or salary payments could happen. "There was therefore no financial clearance.
There was no lawful recruitment. There was no payroll enrolment.
There was no salary payment," he stated.
The personnel allocation accounted for roughly 61.63 per cent of the council's total appropriation, yet not a single naira was accessed. "Not one naira of the personnel provision has been drawn.
There is no personnel expenditure to recover because no expenditure ever occurred," Yakubu said.
The N200 million overhead allocation similarly remained untouched because treasury warrants and cash backing were never issued. The N300 million capital budget never progressed beyond the initial appropriation stage as none of the required procurement procedures were completed.
He detailed that no procurement process reached the spending phase, no Ministerial Tenders Board approved any transaction, no certificate of no objection was issued, and no treasury warrant or cash backing was provided. "No Ministerial Tenders Board approved a transaction.
No Certificate of No Objection was issued. No treasury warrant followed.
No treasury cash-backing followed," the DG said.
Yakubu emphasised that Nigeria's financial control systems worked precisely as intended. "The law did not recover money after it had gone.
It prevented the expenditure before it began," he told the committee.
The ad-hoc committee members questioned the legal foundation for the appropriation after examining what they called a purported act establishing the council.
