What is your reaction to the ₦1.3 billion allocated for an agency that turned out not to exist?
I have said this is far less surprising once you see the bigger picture. When ₦8.8 trillion in public money can move entirely outside official bookkeeping, the line between what is appropriated and what is stolen stops meaning anything. The ghost agency and the shadow budget are not separate scandals, they are two expressions of the same approach to governing: that public money belongs to those in power, to be used as they see fit, beyond the reach of the law and the knowledge of the public.
Where this comes from
Article on X Article by @atiku on X · https://x.com/atiku/status/2073404094681588038 2026-07-04 ›
When a government operates a secret treasury of this scale at precisely the moment it needs to purchase electoral outcomes, the conclusion is not difficult to reach. The Tinubu administration is not reforming Nigeria's economy. It is financing its own political survival with money that belongs to the Nigerian people.
The recent public controversy over the ₦1.3 billion inserted into the 2026 Federal Budget for the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, an agency the administration itself was forced to acknowledge did not exist, is now rendered far less surprising in this broader context. When a government can move ₦8.8 trillion in public money entirely outside its own official bookkeeping, the boundary between what exists and what is a phantom, between what is appropriated and what is stolen, ceases to have any practical meaning. The ghost agency and the shadow budget are not separate scandals. They are two expressions of the same governing philosophy: that public money belongs to those in power, to be deployed as they see fit, beyond the reach of the law and the knowledge of the public.