Fake agency: What does our senate know? By Tonnie Iredia

The Federal Government of Nigeria and its officials led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as well as the Oyo State government and its relevant team led Governor Seyi Makinde deserve huge commendations from all Nigerians including this columnist for bringing to an end, the trauma of the abduction of pupils and teachers from their community in Oriire local government area of Oyo State since May 15, 2026. But for this huge achievement, the subject that would have remained the main matter of the moment across the country today, would have been the embarrassing story of a fake agency that almost scammed the entire nation. Considering that this column abhors cynicism, we are prepared to regard the agency as fake for now because the government of the day has so described it. We hope that the investigations into the dare-devil posture of the agency will throw enough light into its real nature and purpose. While waiting for the findings of the investigation team, we are uninspired by the unusual calm with which our habitually vibrant senate has so far taken the matter.  

The said fake agency had taken certain steps that looked quite daring and uncommon.  Known as the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, the agency was able to appoint a director-general and hundreds of staff. It also secured an office space at the federal secretariat and found its way into the nation’s budget having been assigned a Budget Code 0111062001. Yet, the senate wants Nigerians to regard the issue as a problem of the executive arm of government thereby simplistically passing the buck. We cannot allow the senate to do that except there are things it knows that the rest of us don’t know. Even at that, Nigerians deserve to be told what their senate knows about the national embarrassment. If it were other matters like requests for loans, which the senate normally passes before it gets the requests, one could describe it as routine but not so on matters of Electoral Act and Budget. In the case of budget in particular, history reminds us that our legislators have always claimed to be in charge of the nation’s budget. They can amend, edit and even rewrite the entire budget to confirm that it was approved by them.

It is therefore strange to hear that the senate last Wednesday decided to step down a motion seeking a full-scale investigation into the controversial N1.303 billion budgetary allocation to the purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC). No other body can arrive at the truth of this aspect of the subject better than the national assembly which the senate president leads. Anyone through the executive branch may have originated the request for N1.303 billion in favour of the PFIPC but it is only our legislators that can say whether or not they approved the said amount as requested or varied or rejected it. Indeed, they did not have to set up any panel, they could have just told us that aspect of the subject as soon as the news broke. We want to believe that Senator Suleiman Kawu (APC, Kano South), was propelled by his constituents to move a motion urging the Senate to mandate its Committees on Ethics, Code of Conduct and Public Petitions, as well as Appropriations, “to unravel how the N1.303 billion allocation was proposed, scrutinised, justified and eventually approved.”

The argument of Senator Barau Jibrin, the deputy senate president, who presided over the plenary, that the upper chamber should refrain from debating the matter since the Presidency had already directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to investigate the controversy would have made plenty of sense if that has been the tradition of the senate. Instead, examples are many of different arms investigating the same matter. It however amounts to shadow chasing to among other things ask the ICPC to find out if the senate approved the PFIPC budget when the senate can easily reveal that without investigation. It is funny to see the senate seeking to absolve itself from blame. A few days ago, Yemi Adaramodu (APC, Ekiti South) and chairman of the committee on media and public affairs, stated that the senate had no petition before it to warrant any legislative intervention.  A people’s senate cannot make such a statement which suggests that it is only agitations that can make the senate appreciate the need for public enlightenment. Can someone tell us who presented and defended the controversial budget and before which committee of the senate?

The point to be made is that having realized how involved our legislators usually are in matters of budget, we cannot accept an attempt this time around to make Nigerians believe that budgets are not really important to legislators. We are aware that many insertions put into the budget by our legislators have proven to be quite destabilizing, just as they have always been for personal interest. From past findings of the ICPC on constituency projects, we know the following: i) the projects are never well costed; ii) many of the projects would not have been in the original budget but merely inserted by legislators, iii) Many of the inserted projects are safely placed within certain malleable MDAs whose mandates have no similarity with the irregular projects.  If these findings can easily indict legislators, our leaders must learn to call a spade by its name which is another way of saying that there is no difference between a fake agency and fake constituency projects.

For those who may have forgotten, it was established during the Buhari administration that the friendship between the executive and the legislature was an unwritten agreement to ignore infractions by each side. But then, the late President Buhari was once compelled to openly condemn the insertions of states and local government projects into the federal budget. He only condemned but didn’t go beyond that. At the same time, the executive often used the legislature to give the ruling political party some leverage just before elections. On more than one occasion, the national assembly attempted to use the Electoral Act to deprive the INEC of her absolute discretion to fix dates for elections into various offices in the country. There is therefore the need to ensure that the senate remains essentially a law-making body whose main interest is good governance. Under no circumstance should we overlook a senate that gets involved in every matter it likes when it is convenient while at other times it claims unwillingness to intervene in a matter of public interest.

It is therefore important to hold the senate accountable at this point because our senate has with time over-empowered itself without answering to no one.  At a point for example, our powerful senate was about to pass a bill to amend the Electoral Act 2022 to make voting compulsory for all eligible Nigerians. So many well-meaning citizens had to fight it. In a strongly-worded statement, NBA President Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, described the bill which prescribes fines of up to N100,000 or jail terms for citizens who fail to vote as “an unconstitutional affront to civil liberties” warning that the move would certainly violate constitutional freedoms and undermine democracy. Osigwe’s main point which probably carried the day was that democracy is not sustained by coercion, rather it “thrives on consent, participation, and trust. The moment citizens are forced to vote under the threat of imprisonment, the entire essence of free and fair elections collapses.”

The type of senate that a developing nation like Nigeria desires, is one that engages in collaborative federalism and seeks to create legal frameworks for societal institutions that evolve through the due process of law and not the one that can just make laws to create bodies such as additional law schools in villages of certain legislators without feasibility studies. A senate that operates with impunity is dangerous. So, we detest a senate that claims all powers including the power to silence private individuals. Here we recall the case of Professor Itse Sagay a former Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption who had cause to criticise the senate and was summoned to explain his remarks. Sagay rejected the summon arguing that the senate had no powers to summon a private citizen who expressed his opinion as provided by S39 of the Nigerian constitution. Our current senate is similarly reminded that having affirmed its readiness to stand by the executive, it should assist to throw light on the fake agency saga for a better Nigeria