Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, has addressed a document linking the SGF’s office to the disputed Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC).
Naija News reports that documents have emerged indicating that the Office of the SGF approved the self-styled Director-General of the PFIPC, Adeniyi Adeyemi, to attend the Canada-Africa Fintech Summit in August 2025.
Speaking on the development during an appearance on Arise News, Lawal stated that such correspondence should never have been processed if the agency lacked legal approval.
He argued that if an agency did not officially exist, the SGF’s office would have identified that before forwarding any request.
“It should not have arisen in the first place if it is not a legally approved agency. It should not exist. And the SGF would know that if it doesn’t exist on any basis, why is he forwarding a request? If it doesn’t exist, such will not happen in our time,” he insisted.
Arguing that while the President’s spokesperson may issue official statements on behalf of the administration, Lawal maintained that any correspondence from a federal agency passing through the Office of the SGF should first undergo due diligence to verify the agency’s legal status before it is forwarded.
“I’m sure the president would assume that such an entity has gone through all the checks and balances before it is established, and therefore, not every communication from that agency needs to be verified. But as far as it is coming through the office of the SGF, due diligence must be done first before it is forwarded,” he stated.
Lawal further claimed that the SGF had been sidelined in several government processes, describing the situation as an “institutional compromise” rather than a mere administrative failure.
He questioned how an allegedly non-existent agency could have obtained a budget code and progressed through multiple layers of the budgeting process without being flagged by the relevant institutions.
“It’s institutional compromise, because in this, I sense there’s quite a big racket going on somewhere along the line. If the agency was created by maybe one big man alone, and then he wants to go through the budget process, the budget office assigns the budget code according to the chart of accounts in GIFMIS. So, how did they manage to assign the budget code for this agency that does not exist? Who inserted it?
“Because first of all, the budget office issues a budget call circular to MDAs, and everybody starts to prepare his budget according to the budget line. They give you ceilings, and you prepare your budget and forward it to the budget office as an agency or ministry. Now, the Ministry of Budget and Planning would, in our time, call every MDA to come and defend its budget. Now, if you don’t exist, how did they recognize that you are a genuine entity? Who gave out the budget code and allowed their budget to pass?”, he questioned.
Speaking further, he said, “Nigerians are talking about how 1.3 billion Naira was inserted into the budget. The man himself first said the quarrel came about because he refused to part with 48% of the 27-point-something billion Naira take-off grant. That money has been spent before this budget office was looking for the budget. Who gave him the money? It was not appropriated for; it’s not in any budget, that 27.5 billion Naira for which he says somebody demanded 48%. Who gave him the money? How did the process of generating the request for the release come up? How did it go through?
“We are just talking about the tip of the iceberg here. Down there, before we got to here, 27.5 billion Naira had already been disbursed, according to him, as a take-off grant. How did that money get to him? It was not in the budget. So this is what should frighten us. If such money can go to a fictitious organization, we only now begin to see it when we are quarreling about how did it get into the budget. How did that money get to them?”
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