The Budget Office of the Federation has told the House of Representatives that not a single naira was released or spent from the ₦1.32bn allocated to the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, made this known on Friday, July 24, 2026, while appearing before the House Ad-Hoc Committee investigating the alleged unlawful establishment and funding of the Council.
Yakubu defended the role of his agency in the controversial allocation, insisting that the Budget Office neither created PFIPC nor approved its establishment, recruitment or salary structure.
According to him, the Office only performed its constitutional responsibility by assessing the financial implications of approvals issued by other government institutions.
“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. It received official instruments and did what the law required of it. It measured their fiscal effect,” he said.
Yakubu explained that although the Council had requested ₦3.8bn for personnel costs, the Budget Office rejected the figure and independently calculated ₦802,978,783 based on the approved establishment and the applicable public service salary structure.
“That estimate did not form the basis of the Budget Office’s recommendation. The Budget Office rejected it and made an independent calculation… That calculation produced ₦802,978,783. This was not a concession to the Council. It was the Budget Office’s own fiscal proposal,” he said.
He, however, stressed that the personnel provision never resulted in actual spending because the mandatory financial clearance was not issued.
According to the DG, financial clearance is the final legal approval required before recruitment, payroll enrolment and salary payments can begin.
“There was therefore no financial clearance. There was no lawful recruitment. There was no payroll enrolment. There was no salary payment.”
Yakubu added that although the personnel provision accounted for about 61.63 per cent of the Council’s total appropriation, no funds were accessed.
“Not one naira of the personnel provision has been drawn. There is no personnel expenditure to recover because no expenditure ever occurred,” he said.
He further disclosed that the ₦200m overhead allocation also remained untouched because no treasury warrants or cash backing were issued.
Similarly, the ₦300m capital allocation did not go beyond the appropriation stage because the procurement requirements prescribed by law were never completed.
“No procurement reached the point at which expenditure would arise. No Ministerial Tenders Board approved a transaction. No Certificate of No Objection was issued. No treasury warrant followed. No treasury cash-backing followed,” Yakubu said.
He maintained that the country’s financial control system had worked as intended, stressing that the law stopped the spending before it could occur.
“The law did not recover money after it had gone. It prevented the expenditure before it began,” he said.
During the hearing, members of the committee also questioned the legal basis for making budgetary provisions for PFIPC after examining what they described as a purported Act establishing the Council.
A member of the committee, Abubakar Fulata, said the document submitted by the Budget Office did not contain a gazette number, the signature of the Clerk to the National Assembly or evidence of presidential assent.
He consequently insisted that the document was not a genuine Act of Parliament.
“The purported Act is very clear. It is not genuine because it did not carry the gazette number, it did not have the signature of the Clerk of the National Assembly and it did not carry the signature of Mr. President,” Fulata said.
The lawmaker also criticised government agencies for failing to verify the authenticity of the document before relying on it.
Responding, Yakubu said the Budget Office acted strictly on official establishment approvals, recruitment waivers and salary structures issued by the appropriate statutory authorities.
He added that although PFIPC submitted a request for personnel funding, the correspondence did not influence the Budget Office’s calculations.
“We do not rely on any instrument to calculate personnel costs other than the establishment authorisation and the directives of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission,” he said.
The committee chairman, Rep. Yusuf Gagdi, defended the Budget Office, saying the evidence before the lawmakers showed that the agency had acted on approvals issued by the relevant government institutions.
He said the investigation had established that the documents relied upon by those agencies were later found to be forged.
“The question is whether the Budget Office allocated budget to this agency without the agency satisfying the requirements. The answer, based on the documents before us, is no. I repeat, no,” Gagdi said.
The lawmaker noted that the investigation had now shifted from the Budget Office to determining how forged documents entered official government processes.
“The agency satisfied all the requirements the Budget Office needed before allocating a budget. The issue now is whether those documents were genuine. That is what this committee is investigating,” he said.
Gagdi announced that the Accountant-General of the Federation would appear before the committee on Monday, July 27, 2026, to explain how PFIPC obtained its budget code.
He added that other government agencies would also be questioned as the committee moves towards concluding its investigation.
“By the special grace of God, we will conclude our findings and finish by next week,” the chairman said.
