House Panel Opens PFIPC Budget Investigation
The House of Representatives opens a formal inquiry today into how a council that the Federal Government insists never legally existed secured more than N1.3bn in the 2026 Appropriation Act, yet the two men at the heart of the controversy have not been called to testify, raising early questions about the reach and credibility of the exercise.
Speaker Tajudeen Abbas is scheduled to inaugurate the ad hoc committee at the National Assembly Complex in Abuja, where the panel will also hold its first public hearing. The committee, chaired by Yusuf Gagdi, who represents Pankshin, Kanke and Kanam Federal Constituency of Plateau State, was constituted about two weeks ago after the House adopted a motion of urgent public importance sponsored by Gagdi and seconded by Kafilat Ogbara of Lagos. Lawmakers anchored the resolution on Sections 80, 81, 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, alongside Sections 19, 30 and 50 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, provisions that empower the legislature to scrutinise public spending and interrogate the administration of public funds.
At the center of the matter is the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, an entity the Presidency has publicly disowned. According to Gagdi, the council’s expenditure line surfaced on pages 50 and 51 of the 2026 budget estimates presented by President Bola Tinubu, carried under code 0111062001 with a total provision of N1,302,978,784. He told the House that the body operated from the Federal Secretariat Complex, Phase 3, Abuja, between November 2024 and October 2025, interacted with several government institutions and projected itself as a legitimate agency before it was disowned.
Gagdi described the episode as evidence of a deeper weakness rather than an isolated slip. “The ease with which a single unestablished entity was processed through official channels suggests a systemic vulnerability rather than an isolated administrative lapse,” he told lawmakers when moving the motion. He said the council relied on a document claiming it was established under a provision cited as Chapter N2117 of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, but that National Assembly records showed no such law existed, noting that the closest statute is the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission Act, which the purported instrument appeared to duplicate.
The mandate before the committee is to trace the allocation from the executive proposal through legislative consideration to final passage, and to identify the precise stage at which the provision entered the budget. A copy of the invitation signed by Gagdi and reported by The PUNCH listed an array of senior officials expected to appear, among them the Ministers of Budget and Economic Planning, Finance, Industry, Trade and Investment, Foreign Affairs, and the Attorney General of the Federation. Also invited were the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the chairmen of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission and the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, the Auditor General for the Federation, the Head of the Civil Service, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, the Director General of the Department of State Services and the Inspector General of Police.
Conspicuously absent from that list are Adeniyi Adeyemi, the self styled Director General of the disputed council, and Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to the President. Their omission has become the early flashpoint of the inquiry. A member of the committee, who asked not to be named, questioned the framing. “From the notice, you will see that the two central figures are not invited. I mean Gbajabiamila and Adeyemi. There is an obvious attempt to exempt Gbajabiamila, and that is an attempt by the committee to clear him. From the notice of invitation, there is already a bias,” the lawmaker said. Public affairs analyst Jackson Ojo, in comments reported by The PUNCH, argued that leaving out the Chief of Staff could weaken public trust in the outcome. “As important as the invited government officials are to the investigation, they are not as important as Gbajabiamila,” he said, adding that the man in custody had named the Chief of Staff and should therefore face the lawmakers.
The legislative inquiry runs parallel to a criminal case and a presidential directive already in motion. Adeyemi was arrested in Osun State by operatives of the Intelligence Response Team on Tuesday, hours after Justice Mohammed Umar of the Federal High Court in Abuja issued a bench warrant following his failure to appear for arraignment. The court, according to reports, rescheduled the arraignment to 30 September, where he is expected to face an eight count charge marked FHC/ABJ/CR/562/2025, filed on 27 November 2025 over alleged forgery, fraud and impersonation. He is accused, among other things, of forging an appointment letter purportedly issued by President Tinubu and signed by Gbajabiamila, and of forging presidential letterheaded documents dated 8 March 2024.
Adeyemi has rejected the label of fraudster and stood by his central allegation. In an appearance on Channels Television, he insisted he paid N400m through a proxy to Gbajabiamila to secure his appointment, and said those from whom he borrowed the sum had petitioned the EFCC to recover the money. He has also claimed his life is in danger. The Presidency has firmly dismissed his account. Reports indicate that police forensic analysis concluded that Gbajabiamila’s signature on the disputed appointment letter was forged, while the Office of the Accountant General stated that the council never operated a Central Bank of Nigeria account and received neither public funds nor salaries, even though the allocation appeared in the Appropriation Act. Gbajabiamila, through his solicitors, earlier gave Adeyemi 72 hours to withdraw the allegations and issue a public apology or face civil and criminal action.
President Tinubu, on 7 July, directed the ICPC to conduct a comprehensive investigation and submit a report within 30 days, a timeline that places the commission’s findings within the same window as the House inquiry. The convergence of a court trial set for September, an ICPC probe with a fixed reporting deadline and a legislative hearing beginning today means the PFIPC question is now being examined simultaneously on three fronts, each with different powers and standards of proof.
The controversy has also drawn political voices. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, now of the African Democratic Congress, called on the President to suspend Gbajabiamila to allow what he described as an unfettered investigation, invoking the precedent of the Buhari administration’s suspension of a Secretary to the Government of the Federation during an earlier inquiry. Gagdi, for his part, has been careful to stress the limits of the legislative role, telling colleagues that the motion “neither prejudges nor seeks to pre-empt” the court process or the probe ordered by the President.
For the House, the stakes extend beyond a single line item. Lawmakers have warned that if an entity without legal foundation could pass through both executive and legislative filters undetected, other fictitious provisions may have entered previous budgets unnoticed. The inquiry that begins today will test not only how one phantom council reached the nation’s spending plan, but whether the institutions responsible for guarding the public purse can account for the gap, and whether an investigation that starts without its two principal figures can satisfy a watching public.