The Nigeria Budget office Friday clarified that no single Kobo was approved or released to the controversial Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC).
The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, said, during the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the establishment and budgetary provisions of the fake agency.
Yakubu insisted that the Budget Office neither created the body nor approved its establishment but merely cost its personnel requirement based on official government instruments issued by relevant authorities.
He maintained that although the National Assembly appropriated N1,302,978,783 for the council, not one kobo was released or spent, stressing that the statutory conditions required before public funds could be disbursed were never met.
Presenting the Budget Office’s position before the committee, the Director-General traced the council’s institutional origins to the Presidential Economic Advisory Council inaugurated by former President Muhammadu Buhari on October 9, 2019.
He said before the Budget Office became involved, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation had assigned the council an administrative budget code, giving it an identity within the Federal Government’s budget architecture.
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According to him, without the code, a spending body cannot be recognised for budgeting, appropriated as a spending unit or subsequently participate in the expenditure process.
Yakubu further disclosed that an authorised establishment and a recruitment waiver had already been issued by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, while the relevant public service salary structure was also in place before the council sought budgetary provision.
He stressed that those approvals predated and were separate from the council’s request for funding.
“The council entered the budget through official instruments. Its institutional origins lay in the Presidential Economic Advisory Council inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, on 9 October 2019.
“The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation had assigned the administrative budget code that gave the Council its identity within the Federal Government’s budget architecture.
“Without that code, a spending body cannot be recognised for budgeting, appropriated as a spending unit, or subsequently participate in the expenditure process. An authorised establishment and a recruitment waiver had also been issued by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. The relevant public-service salary structure existed. These instruments predated and stood apart from the Council’s later request for budgetary provision.
“The Budget Office did not create the Council. It did not assign the code. It did not approve the establishment. It did not grant the recruitment waiver. It acted on documents issued through recognised Government channels and performed the task for which it is responsible: it measured the fiscal consequence of those approvals.”
Yakubu disclosed that although the council requested N3,850,935,000 as personnel cost, the Budget Office rejected the figure because it was unsupported and instead, carried out an independent computation using only the authorised establishment, approved recruitment waiver, applicable public service salary structure and the established personnel-cost methodology.
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“The calculation produced N802,978,783.00. That was the amount placed in the Executive Budget proposal and later appropriated. It was not a compromise with the council. It was not a reduced version of the council’s request. It was an independent fiscal determination.”
The Budget Office boss said much of the public debate surrounding the controversy had wrongly assumed that appropriation automatically translated into expenditure.
“The public argument has often begun at the wrong point. The National Assembly appropriated funds for the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, known as PEAC/PFIPC. That fact is not in dispute. The question is what happened next. Nothing did.”
He explained that an appropriation only authorises expenditure in law and does not amount to payment.
“An appropriation is authority in law to make provision for an expenditure. It is not a cheque. It is not a warrant. It is not cash released from the Treasury. Before money can move, other conditions must be met. Different institutions must act. Each must complete its own part. If one condition fails, the chain stops.
“That is what happened here.”
According to Yakubu, Nigeria’s public finance system deliberately divides responsibility among different government institutions to prevent a single office from creating an agency, recruiting staff, releasing money and spending appropriated funds.
He explained that while the Office of the Head of the Civil Service handles establishment and recruitment approvals, the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission regulates remuneration, the Budget Office assesses fiscal implications and issues Financial Clearance where conditions are met, while the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation control warrants, releases, cash backing and payment. Procurement authorities, he added, supervise capital expenditure.
“The strength of the system lies in this division of labour. No single approval is enough. No single office can carry an appropriation from the statute book into a bank account. In the case of PEAC/PFIPC, the chain never opened.”
Yakubu identified Financial Clearance as the critical legal gateway before recruitment and salary payments can commence.
“Financial Clearance is the gate through which a personnel provision must pass before recruitment and salary expenditure can begin. It is not a courtesy letter. It is the formal confirmation that the fiscal and regulatory conditions for recruitment have been met.”
He noted that until Financial Clearance is issued, a personnel provision remains only a figure in the budget and cannot create employees, place anyone on the payroll or generate salary payments.
The Director-General said the Budget Office never issued Financial Clearance because the statutory requirements were incomplete.
