The Budget Office of the Federation has said no public funds were released to the non-existent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) as statutory expenditure controls prevented the appropriation from translating into actual spending.
In a statement issued on Friday, the Director General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, said the public had wrongly conflated parliamentary appropriation with government expenditure, stressing that the budgetary provision never advanced beyond the appropriation stage.
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“The money never moved because the controls held,” Mr Yakubu said.
The statement comes amid ongoing investigations into the activities of the PFIPC, whose operations and inclusion in the 2026 Appropriation Act have triggered probes by the police, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and the National Assembly.
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The police have arrested the council’s promoter and self-styled Director General, Adeniyi Adeyemi, and charged him with forgery and impersonation in an eight-count charge.
President Bola Tinubu has also directed the ICPC to investigate the matter and report within 30 days.
The National Assembly has also invited several heads of government agencies who have shared correspondence and approved the non-existent agency.
PREMIUM TIMES had also listed the Budget Office as one of the government agencies that failed to properly scrutinise the PFIPC before granting it a budget code.
No financial clearance
Mr Yakubu explained that although the National Assembly appropriated N1.3 billion for the council, comprising N802 million for personnel, N200 million for overhead, and N300 million for capital expenditure, none of the statutory conditions required for spending public funds was fulfilled.
He said no procurement plan was approved, no Ministerial Tenders Board considered any transaction, no Bureau of Public Procurement Certificate of No Objection was issued, and no treasury releases followed.
He said the Budget Office never issued the Financial Clearance required before any government agency can recruit staff or commence salary payments.
According to him, the organisation never met the compliance requested by the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) that the proposed staffing and remuneration complied with the approved public service framework.
Mr Yakubu also said the Budget Office formally requested that every payment instrument relating to the agency be withheld after concerns emerged over its legal status.
“As a result, there was no Financial Clearance, no lawful recruitment, no payroll enrolment and no salary payment,” he said.
“Not one kobo of the personnel provision could lawfully have been drawn, and not one kobo was drawn.”
Budget Office defends role
Mr Yakubu also explained that the Budget Office neither created the PFIPC nor approved its establishment.
He said the Office of the Accountant-General had already assigned the council an administrative budget code, while the Office of the Head of the Civil Service had issued an establishment approval and recruitment waiver before the Budget Office received its budget proposal.
He said the Budget Office’s responsibility was limited to assessing the fiscal implications of those approvals.
Mr Yakubu noted that although the council requested N3.85 billion for personnel costs, the Budget Office rejected that estimate and independently calculated personnel requirements using approved staffing and salary structures.
The exercise, he said, produced a personnel estimate of N802 million, which was eventually included in the Executive Budget proposal and approved by the National Assembly.
“It was not a compromise with the council. It was an independent fiscal determination,” he said.
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Mr Yakubu said different institutions exercise separate statutory powers over establishment approvals, recruitment, remuneration, financial clearance, treasury releases and procurement, ensuring that no single office can convert an appropriation into public expenditure.
“The controls did not discover a loss after the event. They prevented the event,” he said.
“There is therefore no personnel expenditure to recover. The money never moved because the controls held.”.
Background
PREMIUM TIMES has extensively reported on the fake agency scam, with the federal government accusing Mr Adeyemi of operating the purported PFIPC, an agency it said does not exist.
The controversy became public after the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, disowned Mr Adeyemi and the PFIPC. The presidency maintained that no such agency existed under President Bola Tinubu’s administration and that Mr Adeyemi was never appointed to head it.
Police investigations began after Mr Gbajabiamila petitioned the Inspector-General of Police and the State Security Service (SSS) on 17 October 2025, alleging forgery and impersonation.
Investigators arrested Mr Adeyemi on 27 October 2025 at an office he allegedly operated within the Federal Secretariat in Abuja.
They also searched his office and residence in Suleja, Niger State, recovered official correspondence exchanged with several Ministries, Departments and Agencies and traced 34 bank accounts allegedly linked to him, including nine opened in the names of purported government agencies.
Mr Adeyemi has maintained his innocence in press statements, media interviews, and correspondence to the authorities.
Speaking with social media influencer and activist Martins Otse, widely known as VeryDarkMan, Mr Adeyemi denied preparing the fake agency’s budget that was included in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
He said he was in police detention during the period the budget was being processed.
During the interview, he also softened his earlier position on the alleged involvement of Mr Gbajabiamila in issuing him the ‘appointment letter’ for the now-disowned agency.
He said he could not say for certain whether Mr Gbajabiamila was involved or not. Mr Gbajabiamila has since issued him a pre-action notice to withdraw his claims, accusing him of corruption, abuse of office, fraud and murder, or face a N10 billion defamation suit and criminal proceedings.
Mr Adeyemi was recently arrested after a Federal High Court Judge issued an arrest warrant against him for repeatedly failing to appear in court.
Meanwhile, the ICPC said it has questioned Mr Gbajabiamila as it began a probe into the controversy.
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