•Adeniyi Adeyemi
The Budget Office of the Federation says no kobo appropriated for the disputed Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PEAC/PFIPC) was spent.
The office maintained that while the National Assembly approved funds for the council, the statutory conditions required to release, pay, or spend the money were never met, reports Channels TV.
The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, said this while appearing before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the establishment and budgetary provisions of the PEAC/PFIPC.
“The conclusion is firm. 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,” Yakubu said.
“The capital provision never matured into procurement or expenditure. The conditions required for spending were not met and were not close to being met. There is therefore no personnel expenditure to recover. The money never moved because the controls held.”
Yakubu said the office withheld financial clearance; no recruitment or payroll was approved, and the Federal Ministry of Finance as well as the Office of the Accountant-General were directed to withhold all payment instruments.
The Budget Office said that the personnel, overhead, and capital provisions never matured into payments or procurement, as the legal and administrative requirements for expenditure were not fulfilled. It added that it would continue to cooperate with the House committee by providing all relevant records and documents to support its position.
The comment came amid the controversy over the PFIPC. Adeniyi Adeyemi had paraded himself as the director-general of the agency for months. Photos of him with diplomats and high-profile Nigerians were circulated on social media. He also had an office space at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja.
Although the presidency issued a rebuttal saying the agency does not exist and has filed charges against him, Adeyemi has insisted that his appointment is legally binding.
He dismissed the presidency’s claims that he forged the appointment letter and accused the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, of collecting money from him through an intermediary for the appointment.
Gbajabiamila has denied the claim and has taken the matter to court. Adeyemi was later arrested in Osun State.
Amid the controversy, the House of Representatives invited officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), security agencies, the Head of Service of the Federation, Didi Walson-Jack, and others to appear before it.
During the session on Monday, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it opened two accounts for the disputed agency but noted that they never recorded inflows or remittances.
According to CBN”s Director of Banking Services, Abdullahi Hamisu, the apex bank received instructions from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, mandating the CBN to open two accounts for the disputed agency.
“Like I said, the accounts have never been operated. As a result, there have not been any foreign exchange allocations to the council from CBN. There have not been any remittances into those two accounts. There have not been approvals because the authority has not been established for those who will operate the account,” Hamisu said on Monday.
In her address to the committee, Walson-Jack said her office did not allocate office space at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja nor deploy staff to the PFIPC.
“The request for deployment of officers was received and noted for consideration. However, there was no deployment of officers by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation to the council,” she told the lawmakers probing the PFIPC scandal and the N1.3 billion allocated to the agency in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The Head of Service noted that “while there is speculation that the council occupied office space in the Federal Secretariat Phase Three, we can state categorically that the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation did not allocate any office space to the PFIPC.”
Already, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has invited Gbajabiamila for questioning over the agency.
ICPC’s move was in line with President Bola Tinubu’s directive to investigate the matter.
