‘Big racket going on’: Babachir Lawal says SGF should have caught fake agency before it reached Tinubu
Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, says the SGF’s office should have detected and blocked correspondence from an allegedly non-existent federal agency long before it reached President Bola Tinubu’s desk.
Lawal spoke on Monday during an interview on Arise Television, weighing in on the controversy surrounding the alleged Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), which the presidency has dismissed as fictitious after its promoter, Adeniyi Adeyemi, was linked to bribery allegations involving senior government officials.
According to Lawal, standard verification procedures within the SGF’s office exist precisely to catch agencies lacking legal recognition. “If an agency is received, processed, and forwarded without somebody asking in the SGF’s office exactly who these people are, it means there’s a dereliction of duty on the side of the SGF,” he said.
He explained that legitimate federal agencies are typically created through a clear process: a memo to the president for approval, deliberation at the Federal Executive Council (FEC), and, where necessary, legislation establishing the agency’s legal status. “What we used to do is if there’s a new agency that either the president or a minister proposes to handle some specific assignments or duties, he will first of all raise a memo to the president, who will approve that such be created,” he said. “And then a memo will be sent to the federal executive council on that particular agency, and we’ll debate it.”
Lawal raised pointed questions about how the agency secured a budget code and moved through the federal budgeting process despite allegedly having no legal existence. “It’s institutional compromise, because in this, I sense there’s quite a big racket going on somewhere along the line,” he said, asking: “How did they manage to assign the budget code for this agency that does not exist? Who inserted it?”
He noted that every ministry, department and agency is required to defend its budget before the federal budget office, making the agency’s apparent free pass all the more suspicious. “If you don’t exist, how did they recognise that you are a genuine entity? Who gave out the budget code and allowed their budget to pass?” he asked.
The former SGF insisted that oversight responsibilities placed squarely on his old office should have caught the irregularity before the matter ever reached the National Assembly. “The SGF should be able to know, because before it gets to the National Assembly, that budget goes through the SGF,” he said. “Unless there’s a dereliction of duty by the SGF’s office, the responsibility to flag that this is a fake agency would have come from them.”
Lawal called for a judicial inquiry rather than a mere administrative review, and challenged Adeyemi’s claim that the agency received a N27.5 billion take-off grant ahead of any formal budgetary allocation. “The man himself first said the quarrel came about because he refused to part with 48 percent of the 27-point-something billion Naira take-off grant,” he said. “That money has been spent before this budget office was looking for the budget. Who gave him the money? It was not appropriated. It’s not in any budget.”
He argued that the disbursement, if confirmed, points to a far deeper problem than the disputed budget line. “We are just talking about the tip of the iceberg here,” he said.
Dismissing suggestions that existing safeguards had exposed the scheme, Lawal said the fallout was more a case of infighting among those involved than institutional vigilance. “I think we all know that thieves and armed robbers always fight, and they expose themselves during sharing,” he said, adding that the fraud “should have worked before that money left the government coffers into the account of the agency.”
Drawing on his own experience of being suspended amid a Senate investigation, Lawal said stepping aside senior officials under scrutiny reflects standard practice. He also criticised the National Assembly for what he called poor budget oversight. “This National Assembly has no interest in scrutinising the budget that comes before them,” he said. “Most of the legislators just go in there to earn their salaries and collect allowances and go. They don’t scrutinise the budget line by line.”
Lawal further accused the Tinubu administration of weak institutional controls. “This government doesn’t take governance seriously. When things like this happen, Nigerians are not surprised. It’s so porous,” he said.
He urged that scrutiny shift toward those who allegedly enabled the agency to operate undetected. “We are talking about an agency that we are claiming doesn’t exist. Maybe it exists, but it doesn’t have a legal framework for its existence. But it exists. And there are a lot of powerful people that make sure it exists in that form. Those are the people we need to expose,” he said.
