No funds were disbursed for PEAC/PFIPC despite inclusion in budget — Budget Office

By Precious Mark

The Budget Office of the Federation has declared that not a single naira was disbursed to the Presidential Economic Advisory Council/Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PEAC/PFIPC), despite its N802.9 million allocation in the national budget.

Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu, explained that the entire sum remained strictly untouched inside the Treasury because the mandatory financial clearance required to release public funds was never issued.

Yakubu disclosed this in an official statement released on Friday, clarifying that legislative appropriation alone does not translate to an automatic cash release or authority to spend.

“An appropriation is an authority in law to make provision for an expenditure.”

“It is not a cheque. It is not a warrant. It is not cash released from the Treasury. Before money can move, other conditions must be met. If one condition fails, the chain stops. That is what happened here,” he said.

Detailing how the budget figure was derived, the Budget Office Chief revealed that the Council had originally demanded N3.85 billion for personnel costs.

The Budget Office, however, discarded the unsupported estimate and independently slashed the provision to N802.9 million using standard public-service payroll formulas.

Addressing questions over how the body entered the national budget architecture, Yakubu clarified that the Budget Office neither created the Council nor granted its recruitment waivers.

Its institutional origins trace back to October 2019 under former President Muhammadu Buhari, with formal establishment approvals issued by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and administrative budget codes assigned by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

“Until financial clearance is issued, a personnel provision remains a figure in the budget,” Yakubu emphasized, noting that the strict division of labor across public finance institutions successfully protected government funds from unauthorized spending.