The Senator representing Kano South, Kawu Sumaila, on Wednesday insisted that the Senate must conduct its own investigation into the controversial N1.3bn budgetary allocation to the purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, despite the upper chamber’s decision to await the outcome of the ongoing probe ordered by President Bola Tinubu.
Sumaila spoke with journalists shortly after plenary, hours after the Senate rejected his request for an independent legislative investigation into how the agency, which the Presidency has described as non-existent, secured an allocation in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
The lawmaker maintained that his concern was not about the creation of the agency but about the integrity of the National Assembly’s appropriation process and determining how the budgetary provision found its way into the national budget.
He said, “I am more concerned about the budget because it directly affects our National Assembly. Constitutionally, we are empowered to make a budget for Nigeria. The executive will lay a proposal before us, and then we will start working on it from A to Z.
“Therefore, to our surprise, this issue came up that there is a hidden budget, which may have been released. Therefore, I drew the attention of the Senate to the need to constitute a committee, either ad hoc or standing, to find out what really happened.
