By Gift Chapi Odekina Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, on Friday defended the agency’s role in the controversial budgetary allocation to the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), insisting that despite provisions made in the 2026 Appropriation Act, not a single kobo was released or spent because the statutory conditions for expenditure were never fulfilled. Appearing before the House of Representatives Ad-Hoc Committee investigating the alleged unlawful establishment and funding of the council, the DG maintained that the Budget Office neither created the council nor approved its establishment, recruitment or salaries. He told lawmakers that the office merely carried out its constitutional responsibility of assessing the fiscal implications of approvals issued by other government institutions.
“The Budget Office did not create the council. It did not approve its establishment. It did not grant its recruitment waiver.
It received official instruments and did what the law required of it. It measured their fiscal effect,” he said. The DG explained that while the council requested N3.8 billion as personnel cost, the Budget Office rejected the estimate and independently calculated a much lower figure of N802.98 million based on the approved establishment and applicable public service salary structure.
“That estimate did not form the basis of the Budget Office’s recommendation. The Budget Office rejected it and made an independent calculation… That calculation produced N802,978,783. This was not a concession to the council.
It was the Budget Office’s own fiscal proposal,” Yakubu said. He stressed, however, that the personnel provision never translated into actual spending because the office withheld the mandatory financial clearance.According to him, financial clearance is the final legal approval required before recruitment, payroll enrolment and salary payments can commence. “There was therefore no financial clearance.
There was no salary payment.” He added that although the personnel provision represented about 61.63 per cent of the council’s total appropriation, no funds were ever accessed. “Not one naira of the personnel provision has been drawn. There is no personnel expenditure to recover because no …
Summary from source