The Executive Director of Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity, and also a public policy analyst, Dr. Umar Yakubu, has raised concerns over what he described as serious accountability failures exposed by the controversy surrounding the alleged fake Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, arguing that the focus should go beyond individuals involved and address systemic weaknesses in Nigeria’s oversight and public finance management systems.

Recall that on June 11, 2026, the Presidency disowned the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council and denied appointing anyone to represent the body, insisting that no such agency exists under the current administration.

“For the first time since this scandal came about, people have been focusing on the person—that’s the prince or whatever—but they are not looking at the accountability system and mechanism, which we have been saying has been too weak.

“So now, to the second layer about accountability mechanisms. Assuming, whether it was established or not, how do you establish an agency, get funding—1.2 billion or so, whatever the amount is—it even has a budget of twenty-something billion, open an account with the Central Bank, meaning payments have come from the Accountant General of the office, meaning the Auditor General of the Federation has access? All these accountability mechanisms.

“Then for the presidency to now come and expose these lapses—they came and issued a statement that was just bringing out all these lapses, meaning they do not check all these things. So these are the problems of what we are talking about, and these things need to be fixed. Because right now, just one more point, assuming they jail this person, what happens to the other ones that we are not aware of? There are so many of them, and what happens to all the spending that nobody is checking? Lastly, again, the National Assembly just needs to wake up to its responsibility,” he urged.

Yakubu further expressed concern over what he described as weak accountability mechanisms, questioning how an alleged fake agency could operate from the Federal Secretariat and allegedly receive official recognition without triggering red flags from multiple government institutions.

“What worries me the most is the weakness of the accountability mechanisms. That you can have a fake agency situated right in the Federal Secretariat.”

He noted that the issue goes beyond the amount involved and reflects systemic failures in oversight and detection across the public sector.

“When you have about seven, eight federal agencies all not being able to detect a fake agency to raise the red flag—on the other side, you have the National Assembly sending letters back and forth to that same agency, and somebody has come to tell us it is fake.”

Speaking on the strength of the Electoral Act in preventing arbitrary candidate substitutions, Dr. Yakubu said the law is robust in principle but noted that political parties and lawyers have continued to exploit loopholes to serve political interests.

“The Electoral Act is actually a very strong law if you really look at the law in principle. It can get us to have a very strong democracy, strong elections, and all of that. But the problem is the lawyers and the parties actually have found ways to be abusing the system just to favor their own political interests. We’re in a democracy, and every case we have has to end up at the court, and that is just what is playing out. Everybody will utilize any loophole possible to see how it can favor his own party,” he said.

Commenting on the withdrawal of US troops from Nigeria, Dr. Yakubu said the development underscores the need for the country to strengthen its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, while improving efforts to disrupt terrorist financing networks.

“The withdrawal of the US troops. I think it’s a good thing that they came. At least they have supported the country, mostly especially I’m sure in terms of intelligence sharing they have given us because they have superior technology to support Nigeria. But now that they have left, my hope and prayer is that the Nigerian state now is ready to fill in that gap that they have left,” he said.

He added: “And most of the areas where they would have helped is mostly maybe in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, because those are the areas—the kinds of terrorism we have, terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, those major ones—are things that they are moving in the open. So, you need those eyes in the sky to see those things.

“So, we need to strengthen how we stop the money from flowing to those terrorist groups, and that needs a lot of cooperation both internally and with our international partners,” he noted. (AriseNews TV)

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