The Budget Office of the Federation has defended its handling of the controversial ₦1.303 billion allocation to the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PEAC/PFIPC), insisting that no money was released or spent despite the appropriation approved by the National Assembly.
In a detailed statement issued on Friday, the Budget Office said public debate over the controversial allocation had wrongly assumed that appropriation automatically translated into expenditure.
It stressed that under Nigeria’s public finance laws, budget approval alone does not authorise the release or spending of government funds.
“The issue was never merely whether Parliament had appropriated funds. It was whether the law permitted those funds to become expenditure,” the statement said.
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The statement was signed by the Assistant Director and Head of Information and Public Relations, Afolabi Falilu Olajuwon.
The Budget Office explained that before any government agency can spend public money, several statutory conditions must be fulfilled.
These include:
- Financial Clearance
- Lawful recruitment
- Payroll enrolment
- Treasury warrant
- Cash backing
- Procurement approvals for capital projects
According to the Office, none of these requirements was fulfilled in the case of PEAC/PFIPC.
“There was therefore no Financial Clearance. There was no lawful recruitment. There was no payroll enrolment. There was no salary payment.”
It maintained that the country’s expenditure control system worked exactly as designed by preventing the controversial appropriation from becoming actual spending.
The Budget Office also explained how the council found its way into the 2026 Appropriation Act.
It said the agency was not created by the Budget Office, nor was it included simply because it requested funding.
According to the Office, the council’s origin can be traced to the Presidential Economic Advisory Council established during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
It added that before preparation of the 2026 budget began, several official administrative instruments had already been issued by government institutions, including:
- An administrative code from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation;
- An authorised establishment and recruitment waiver from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation; and
- An applicable public service salary structure.
The Budget Office said its role was limited to calculating the fiscal implications of the documents submitted by relevant agencies.
According to the statement, the council initially proposed a personnel budget of about ₦3.85 billion.
However, the Budget Office said it rejected the proposal after conducting its own assessment and reduced the allocation.
It also clarified that the 2026 Appropriation Bill only became law after President Bola Tinubu assented to it on March 31, 2026.
Before that date, the Office said it could only prepare budget estimates and had no legal authority to issue Financial Clearance.
The Budget Office further dismissed claims that the council could have accessed the ₦802.98 million personnel allocation, which represented more than 61 per cent of its total ₦1.303 billion budget.
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It explained that personnel allocations are never paid to agencies as lump sums, but are disbursed monthly to verified employees captured on the Federal Government payroll.
Since no staff members were lawfully recruited and no payroll existed, the Office insisted that no salary payments could be made.
“Not one kobo of the personnel provision could lawfully have been drawn, and not one kobo was drawn,” the statement concluded.
The clarification comes amid ongoing investigations by the House of Representatives, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and other agencies into the controversial PFIPC, whose legal status has come under intense scrutiny despite appearing in the 2026 federal budget.
