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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The Budget Office has said that it allocated funds to the controversial Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) in the 2026 budget in line with relevant government instruments.
The Director General, Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, stated this on Friday, when he appeared before the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee probing the inclusion of the PFIPC, which the government has disowned in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The PFIPC has been in the news in recent times after the Presidency disowned the agency, amid revelations that the agency got N1.3billion appropriation in the 2026 budget, as well as opened accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
However, Yakubu traced the origin of the controversial agency to its institutional origin in the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PAEC) inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari, on the 9th October 2019.
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He noted that the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation assigned an administrative budget code to the agency that gave it identity “within the Federal Government’s budget architecture.”
Nonetheless, the DG explained that no expenditure has been made from the appropriated fund, as no financial clearance or procurement clearance was issued, because the required conditions were incomplete, before controversy broke over the legal status of the agency.
According to him, “the public finance system does not allow one office to create an agency, approve its staff, place them on payroll, release money, procure assets and spend the appropriation. Those powers are divided. The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation deals with establishment and recruitment approvals.
“The National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission regulates remuneration. The Budget Office assesses fiscal implications and issues Financial Clearance when the conditions are met. The Federal Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation control warrants, releases, cash backing and payment. The procurement authorities govern capital expenditure. According to him, the PFIPC had requested ₦3,850,935,000.00 as personnel cost, in the 2026 fiscal year, but the Budget Office’s calculation produced ₦802,978,783.00, which was included in the 2026 Budget proposal and later appropriated, while ₦200,000,000.00 and ₦300,000,000.00 were budgeted for overhead and capital respectively.
