The Budget Office of the Federation has told the House of Representatives that no funds were released or spent from the N1.3 billion appropriated for the controversial Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) in the 2026 budget.
The Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, made the disclosure on Friday while appearing before the House ad hoc committee investigating the establishment of the council and the budgetary allocation approved for it.
Yakubu said none of the statutory or administrative requirements needed to access the funds had been fulfilled, making it impossible for any expenditure to take place.
He said the Budget Office withheld financial clearance, while no recruitment or payroll approval was granted. He added that the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation were directed not to process any payments for the council.
According to him, allocations for personnel, overhead and capital expenditure never progressed to the implementation stage because all legal conditions required for spending public funds remained unmet.
“Not one kobo of the personnel provision could lawfully have been drawn, and not one kobo was drawn. The overhead provision never matured into a lawful cash release, while the capital provision never matured into procurement or expenditure,” Yakubu told the lawmakers.
He assured the committee of the Budget Office’s full cooperation, saying all relevant records would be made available to support the ongoing investigation.
The investigation follows controversy surrounding the PFIPC after Adeniyi Adeyemi publicly claimed to be its Director-General despite the Presidency maintaining that no such agency exists.
