Budget Office Says N1.3bn PEAC/PFIPC Allocation Not Made

The Budget Office of the Federation has defended the controversial N1.303 billion appropriation for the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PEAC/PFIPC), insisting that none of the funds was spent because Nigeria’s public expenditure control system blocked the release of the money.

In a statement issued on Friday, Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, said the appropriation never translated into expenditure as the statutory conditions required for the release of public funds were never fulfilled.

Yakubu stressed that an appropriation only authorises potential spending and does not amount to actual expenditure unless a series of legal and administrative requirements are satisfied, including financial clearance, lawful recruitment, payroll enrolment, Treasury warranting, cash backing and procurement approvals where applicable.

According to him, none of these conditions was met in the case of PEAC/PFIPC, preventing any part of the appropriation from leaving government coffers.

“The money never moved because the controls held,” he said.

The Budget Office explained that although the National Assembly appropriated N1.303 billion for the council, comprising N802.98 million for personnel, N200 million for overheads and N300 million for capital expenditure, the allocation remained only on paper.

Yakubu disclosed that while the council initially proposed a personnel budget of about N3.85 billion, the Budget Office independently reviewed the estimate using the approved establishment, salary structure and government costing methodology, reducing it to N802.98 million before it was included in the Executive Budget and later approved by the National Assembly.

He noted that after the 2026 Appropriation Act received presidential assent on March 31, 2026, the Budget Office could not issue the mandatory Financial Clearance because the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission had not confirmed that the proposed staffing and remuneration complied with the approved public service compensation framework.

Without Financial Clearance, he said, there could be no recruitment, payroll enrolment or salary payments.

The Director-General further explained that the N200 million overhead allocation also never became payable because overhead releases require Treasury warrants and cash backing issued monthly, subject to the government’s cash position.

He revealed that after legal questions emerged over the council’s status in June 2026, the Budget Office formally requested the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation to withhold all payment instruments, effectively preventing any overhead releases.

Similarly, the N300 million capital allocation never progressed to the procurement stage, as no procurement plan was approved, no Ministerial Tenders Board considered any transaction, and no Certificate of No Objection was issued by the Bureau of Public Procurement.

Yakubu maintained that no Treasury warrants or cash backing were issued for the capital allocation.

He argued that the episode demonstrates the strength of Nigeria’s expenditure control framework, saying the system did not recover public funds after they had been spent but instead prevented the expenditure from occurring.

“The law did not recover money after it had gone. It prevented the money from going,” he said.

The Budget Office added that it would continue to cooperate with all lawful investigations by providing records, calculations, correspondence and other documentation to establish that no part of the PEAC/PFIPC appropriation was ever disbursed.