Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, defended the agency’s role in the controversial budgetary allocation to the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), insisting that no amount of money 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 but merely carried out assessment of the fiscal implications of approvals issued by other government institutions.
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.
however, he stressed that the personnel provision never translated into actual spending because the office withheld the mandatory financial clearance.
