PFIPC scandal: Babachir Lawal queries budgetary allocation to ‘fake agency’

Amid the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC, scandal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, has claimed that there is an institutional compromise and a big racket going on.

Lawal made this claim on Monday when he appeared as a guest in an interview on Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’.

Recall that ‘the Director-General of the  PFIPC, Adeniyi Adeyemi, alleged that Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, received N400 million through a proxy and demanded an additional N200 million to secure his appointment.

The presidency, however, refuted the allegation, saying that Gbajabiamila cannot write letters or give appointments.

Airing his own opinion, Lawal said, “There’s an institutional compromise and a big racket going on.

“If the agency was created by just one person, how was a budget assigned to an agency that doesn’t exist?

“Agencies defend budgets. If they didn’t exist, how was the budget allowed to pass? There are different steps taken that would have flagged this before the budget was passed.

“Funds cannot be appropriated to an agency that has not been legislated.

“There has to be a legal basis for its existence, but first, it is the executive that raises such an agency and makes the proposal before further approvals by the Accountant-General of the Federation and the legislature.”