The Budget Office of the Federation has said that none of the N1,302,978, 783.00 appropriated by the National Assembly for the Presidential Economic Advisory Council /Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PEAC/PFIPC) was ever lawfully spent, insisting that Nigeria’s expenditure control system worked exactly as designed to stop the money before it moved.
In a Media Statement issued on Friday, Director-General, Tanimu Yakubu said the central issue was never whether NASS appropriated the funds, that, he said, was “a matter of record.” Rather, the question was whether the law ever permitted that appropriation to become actual expenditure. An appropriation is not expenditure; it is only the beginning of a legal process,” the statement said.
According to the Budget Office, PEAC/PFIPC entered the 2026 Budget on the strength of prior official instruments, an administrative code from the Office of the Accountant-General, an approved establishment and recruitment waiver from the Office of the Head of Civil Service, and an existing public-service salary structure. The Budget Office said it did not create these instruments but simply cost their fiscal effect.
The Office rejected the Council’s own personnel estimates of N3, 850, 935, 000.00, instead independently calculating a much lower figure of N802, 978, 783.00, using the authorised establishment and standard costing methodology. That figure, not the Council’s request, was what went into the Executive Budget proposal and was eventually appropriated.
The statement detailed how each of the three appropriated components -personnel, overhead, and capital, stalled at a different stage of the expenditure chain:
“Personnel ( N802, 978, 783.00, 61.63% of the total) never received Financial Clearance. The 2026 Appropriation Bill was not signed into law until 31 March 2026, and afterwards, the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission had not confirmed compliance with its remuneration template. No clearance meant no recruitment, no payroll enrolment, and no salary payments.
“Overhead (N200,000,000.00, 15.35%) released monthly after Treasury warranting and cash backing. In June 2026, after doubts emerged over the Council’s legal status, the Budget Office formally instructed the Ministry of Finance and the Accountant-General’s Office to withhold all payment instruments, closing off any release.
“Capital (N300,000,000.00, 23.02%) intended as start-up funding for operational assets, it required a procurement plan, Ministerial Tender Board action, and, where applicable, a Bureau of Public Procurement Certificate of No Objection. None of these steps occurred.”
Yakubu emphasised that the safeguard lies in Nigeria’s institutional division of responsibility, where the Budget Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Accountant-General’s Office, the Head of Civil Service, and procurement authorities, each control a different link in the chain from appropriation to expenditure.
“No one institution can carry public money from appropriation to expenditure,” the statement read.
The Budget Office concluded that “not one kobo” of the personnel provision was drawn, and that the overhead and capital provisions likewise never matured into lawful spending. “The system did not chase a loss. It prevented one,” the statement said, framing the episode as evidence of the resilience, not the weakness, of Nigeria’s public finance controls.
The Office said it would continue cooperating with every lawful inquiry and would provide all relevant records and computations to establish the facts.
