The House of Representatives deepened its investigation into the controversial Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council on Friday when the Budget Office of the Federation made a striking claim: no money was actually handed over to the agency despite N1.302 billion being set aside for it in the 2026 budget.
Tanimu Yakubu, who leads the Budget Office, told lawmakers that the council failed to satisfy legal requirements needed before funds could leave the Treasury. The testimony shifted the inquiry away from spending patterns toward a more troubling question—how a non-existent agency obtained official status across multiple government departments.
President Bola Tinubu's administration has consistently denied establishing the PFIPC through law or executive decree. Yet the council somehow secured a budget code, engaged with state agencies and landed N1.302 billion in the 2026 spending plan.
Yakubu pushed back against suggestions his office created the council or enabled its rise. He told the House Ad Hoc Committee that the Budget Office neither created the agency nor assigned its budget code.
"The Budget Office did not approve its establishment. It did not grant its recruitment waiver," he said.
According to his account, the Office of the Accountant-General had already handed out a budget code before the Budget Office entered the picture. The Office of the Head of the Civil Service had separately issued hiring approval.
Those moves allowed the Budget Office to calculate the money needed, though Yakubu insisted this didn't mean his agency had created anything. It simply followed the law.
The council originally demanded N3.85 billion to cover payroll costs. Yakubu revealed the Budget Office flat rejected that request and ran its own numbers based on the approved staffing plan and civil service pay scales.
"The Budget Office rejected it and made an independent calculation," he told lawmakers.
His office arrived at N802,978,783—not as a favour to the council but as what the Budget Office deemed the correct figure. That calculation eventually fed into the Executive Budget before lawmakers voted to appropriate the total N1.302 billion.
However, Yakubu underscored a critical distinction that many miss: appropriation simply permits spending. It doesn't hand cash to agencies.
"An appropriation is authority in law to make provision for expenditure," he explained. "It is not a cheque.
It is not a warrant. It is not cash released from the Treasury."
The Budget Office never issued the Financial Clearance certificate required before hiring staff, enrolling workers on payroll or releasing salaries could begin. Without that document, no funds could move.
