By George Mgbele\u0137e<\/p>\n
Disturbed by the long silence of National Assmbly over the huge allocation to an illegal Agency, Senator Suleiman Abdulrahman Kawu has urged the Senate to launch an independent investigation into how the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC, an entity publicly disowned by the Presidency as “fake” and “fictitious”, was allocated N1.3 billion in the 2026 Appropriation Act.<\/p>\n
Moving a motion on the floor o Senate on Tuesday under Order 9 and Rule 9(c) of the Senate Standing Orders, Senator Kawu, representing Kano South, described the development as a “matter of grave institutional concern” that threatens the integrity of the National Assembly and the credibility of the budget process. According to him, the allocation totals *N1,302,978,784*, broken down into *N802,978,784 for personnel costs, N200,000,000 for overhead, and N300,000,000 for capital expenditure*.<\/p>\n “Although sections of the media described the matter as a ‘N2 Billion scandal,’ the verifiable appropriation stands at over N1.3 Billion Naira for an entity now officially claimed by the Government to be non-existent,” Kawu said.<\/p>\n He expressed concern that the inclusion undermines public confidence, exposes weaknesses in budgetary scrutiny, and subjects the Federal Government to “avoidable domestic and international criticism” over transparency and fiscal governance.<\/p>\n In response to his motion Senate resloved as follows: Fielding questions from journalists Sen. Kawu clarified that his focus was not on whether the President can create an agency, but on “who legalized the inclusion or who facilitated the inclusion of that agency in the national budget,” which he said is the constitutional responsibility of the National Assembly.<\/p>\n “Any inclusion, any overhead, it is executive proposal. But the constitution too allowed us to compose a budget. We can add. We can subtract. Therefore, if that agency is new and did not emanate from the budget office of the President, then who is responsible in the National Assembly?” he queried.<\/p>\n He noted that while President Bola Tinubu has constituted a committee to investigate the PFIPC saga, the legislature must also “do its own” to safeguard the integrity of the appropriation process.<\/p>\n The motion sparked debate on procedure, with some lawmakers referencing Order 9(9c) on matters of privilege and national importance. Sen. Kawu insisted he invoked privilege because “it has power” and “nobody can stop you.”<\/p>\n He added that most senators are “in support of my position” that the National Assembly cannot “keep quiet” while its name is linked to the controversy.<\/p>\n On whether any money had been released to PFIPC. Sen. Kawu said that was part of what the proposed investigation must determine. “Budget is the most important aspect of this issue. If there is no budget, they can easily go with it. But there is budget. Therefore, they must tell us from where it comes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By George Mgbele\u0137e Disturbed by the long silence of National Assmbly over the huge allocation to an illegal Agency, Senator Suleiman Abdulrahman Kawu has urged the Senate to launch an independent investigation into how the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC, an entity publicly disowned by the Presidency as “fake” and “fictitious”, was allocated N1.3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15369,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365\/revisions\/15369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nSen. Kawu told the chamber that despite the Executive publicly disavowing PFIPC and directing law enforcement to arrest its “self-acclaimed officials” for alleged forgery and impersonation, the entity was still captured in the 2026 budget under Code 0111062001.<\/p>\n
\n1. *Condemn* the administrative lapses or fraudulent schemes that allowed PFIPC into the budget.
\n2. *Direct* the Committees on Ethics, Code of Conduct & Public Petitions and Appropriations to investigate:
\n a. How the N1.3bn was proposed, scrutinized and approved;
\n b. The MDAs and officials responsible for facilitating PFIPC’s inclusion;
\n c. Whether any funds have been released or any bank account operated under the budget line.<\/p>\n