By Idriss LAWAL
Nigeria’s lower house, the House of Representatives, has set up a 12-man panel to investigate a mysterious ‘fake’ agency and how N1.303 billion was included in the 2026 Budget for the agency.
Adopting a motion of urgent national importance sponsored by Plateau lawmaker Yusuf Adamu Gagdi, the House said the committee would have the mandate to trace the budgetary provision from the Executive’s proposal through committee consideration to passage, and identify the stage at which the agency was introduced into the budget cycle.
The committee is also to invite the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning and the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation to clarify the verification procedures applied before new entities are admitted into the budget.
The investigation, which is to last four weeks, is also to verify all ministries, departments, agencies and other bodies reflected in the 2025 and 2026 Appropriation frameworks against their instruments of establishment, and receive briefings from the relevant security and anti-corruption agencies without prejudice to the proceedings pending before the Federal High Court.
However, the Senate decided go a different route, opting to wait for the outcome of the Executive-initiated probe before taking any further action.
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A motion of urgent national importance by Senator Suleiman Kawu (APC, Kano South) was raised under a point of order during plenary.
It was titled: “Urgent Need to Investigate the Budgetary Allocation, Operations and Controversy Surrounding the Purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) to Safeguard the Integrity of the Senate and the Federal Government.”
Presenting the motion, Kawu said the controversy surrounding the council posed a threat to the integrity of the Senate, the credibility of the National Assembly and the legislature’s constitutional powers of oversight and appropriation.
He said the public had been inundated in recent weeks with allegations and counter-allegations over the existence and activities of the entity known as the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
The lawmaker urged the Senate to condemn what he described as administrative lapses, internal collaboration or fraudulent schemes that allegedly led to the inclusion of a purportedly unauthorised entity under Budget Code 0111062001 in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The Senate and the House of Representatives yesterday took different positions on the probe into how money was appropriated in the 2026 Budget for the fictitious federal agency – the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC).
On Tuesday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to conduct a comprehensive probe into the entire PFIPC saga, in which one Adeniyi Adeyemi Mathew claims to be the agency’s Director-General, supposedly appointed by the President.
