The House of Representatives has constituted an ad hoc committee to investigate how over ₦1.3 billion was included in the 2026 federal budget for the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), an entity the Federal Government says was never legally established. The committee is chaired by Hon. Yusuf Adamu Gagdi, APC, Plateau, and will examine the budgetary process and institutional failures that allowed the alleged agency into the appropriation framework. Gagdi noted the entity operated from the Federal Secretariat Complex, Phase III, Abuja, between November 2024 and October 2025, and engaged with several government institutions despite lacking legal backing.
The probe will determine when and how the allocation was introduced—whether in the Executive's budget proposal or during legislative consideration—and assess where verification mechanisms failed. Gagdi stated records show no law establishing the PFIPC, and that the organisation relied on a document claiming to be "Chapter N2117, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria," which does not exist. The nearest actual law is the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission Act, making the referenced legal instrument "manifestly false." The House has directed the committee to invite the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning and the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation to explain verification procedures for new entities.
The committee must also verify all bodies in the 2025 and 2026 Appropriation Frameworks against their legal instruments and obtain briefings from security and anti-corruption agencies. The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation has been asked to confirm no funds have been released for the PFIPC and that no payment warrants will be honoured. The House mandated a report within four weeks. Allegations of forgery and impersonation linked to the entity are under criminal investigation at the Federal High Court in Abuja. The probe will focus solely on budgetary processes, not the criminal case.
Yusuf Gagdi is probing a budget allocation to an agency the government says does not legally exist, though it operated in a federal building for nearly a year. The committee is investigating how verification systems failed to block an entity using a non-existent law to gain access to government processes. If the PFIPC had no legal basis yet still secured space in the federal budget and interacted with agencies, the safeguards meant to prevent fraud appear ineffective. The probe must explain how such an entity passed through multiple official checkpoints without detection.
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