On 9 June, 2026, the Presidency announced that “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved the establishment of a Presidential Task Force on Ebola Virus Disease Preparedness and Emerging Public Health Threats and ordered the immediate release of ₦10 billion as emergency intervention funding.” You remember that statement? Today is 20 July. Thank God there has been no Ebola outbreak. But where is the ₦10 billion? Spent? Unspent? Where is it?
A voice told me that the President and his Presidency are very straightforward in money matters. They will explain. We should not be too much in a hurry.
I watched a guest and his host discuss the scandal of the PFIPC, the popular ‘fictitious’ federal agency, on an Arise Television programme two Tuesdays ago. They agreed that there might be more than the PFIPC ghost in the Government of Nigeria.
“When you see one rat in your house, begin a thorough search,” the guest said while answering a question.
“That is true. Rats do not live alone; they live in colonies,” his host replied.
What sounded like an ordinary exchange on television carried extraordinary wisdom. If one fictitious agency could burrow its way into the machinery of government, occupy offices, receive public officials and secure a place in the federal budget, it is only sensible to ask whether there are other rats in the house.
It was that question that sent me to the website of the Budget Office of the Federation, where I got the 2,790-page 2026 budget details document. I skimmed through it again and again. This reporter was looking for more rats. And did he find any?
The 2026 Federal Government budget runs to 2,790 pages. It is a very big house, too big not to have rodents in it. Like a crime scene waiting for investigators, between its covers are provisions that challenge logic, statutory mandates and even common sense. One of the loudest exhibits is the budget of the National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS). If budgets could blush, this one would.
The NBAIS is an education regulator. Its legal remit is to develop curricula, conduct examinations, certify qualifications and ensure standards in Arabic and Islamic education. Yet the Board, at its headquarters, has a personnel allocation of ₦18.05 billion in the 2026 budget. Pause there.
That personnel bill of the NBAIS exceeds the entire personnel budget of the National Examinations Council (NECO), the body that conducts nationwide examinations for millions of Nigerian children. It is more than four times the personnel allocation of the National Universities Commission (NUC), which regulates every university in the federation. It is almost ten times the personnel budget of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), the regulator of Nigeria’s polytechnics, monotechnics and technical colleges. It is nearly fourteen times that of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE).
Before I am accused of peddling rumours and falsehoods, let me quickly exhibit what I saw in the budget, including the pages where I saw them:
The National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS) has a personnel allocation of ₦18.05 billion (page 1601 of the 2026 budget). The National Examinations Council (NECO) has ₦15.53 billion (page 1593); Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), ₦6.364 billion (page 1593); National Universities Commission (NUC), ₦4.216 billion (page 1821); National Library of Nigeria, ₦2.360 billion (page 1593); National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), ₦1.843 billion (page 1601); and the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), ₦1.306 billion (page 1593). The Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) is responsible for developing the national curriculum used by virtually every school in Nigeria. It has a personnel budget of about ₦4 billion (page 1593). NBAIS has more than four times as much.
My friend in accounting told me that, in public budgeting, personnel cost is the amount appropriated to pay the people who work for an institution. It is the agency’s payroll: the money budgeted for salaries, wages, allowances, pensions and other statutory employment benefits. That naturally raises a question. How many workers does the National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies have in its employment to justify a personnel bill of more than ₦18 billion? How large is its establishment? How many are academics, how many are administrators, and how many are support staff?
Again, on page 1174 of the 2026 document is Project ERGP12231866. It is named “Repair of Ijebu–Remo Road in Ogun State” with an allocation of ₦70 million. The President is a Yoruba man. He knows there is no such town or community called Ijebu Remo, and there is no road so named. Ijebu Remo is a whole district of 33 towns connected by several roads. So, what is that insertion about? Can I safely suggest that the budget describes a phantom road?
And ₦70 million? At today’s cost of road construction, how many centimetres of road can that amount repair? The sum is so paltry that one wonders whether it is there to give a few hungry rodents something to nibble.
Almost from the first page to the last, many such nibble-sized allocations are sprinkled across the budget plate like crumbs deliberately dropped for the palate of miserable rats.
Strange things like the above nudge one to tell the President that he has more to investigate than the notorious Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
One good thing that has come out of the ugly saga of the fictitious government agency is that it has forced some of us to read the budget details for the first time. I had never paid much attention to that annual ritual, attractive in figures, very ugly in implementation.
We spent the whole of the last month hunting a curious ghost haunting the Presidency of Nigeria. It is called the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC). Who coined that name? And what did ‘they’ think it meant? Whatever it means, what the matter is with the ghost and the ghost catchers, the whole world knows already. What is missing are the ingredients used in cooking the broth that has set their house on fire.
President Bola Tinubu has ordered an investigation. He should. But is that enough? Rats are voracious creatures, forever nibbling and gnawing, constantly eating and chewing, and hiding. We learn this in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road.
If the eyes are attentive enough, they will see the nose with all its structures. If the President would go back and read the budget he signed into law in December 2025, he might well summon Ṣàngó, the god of thunder, to come and sit in judgment.
Every budget tells a story. This one reads like a crime novel illustrated with figures. Yet the Senate would not probe questionable entries discovered in there. What is it protecting? The Senate is either afraid of its shadows or it is confident in its perfidy.
On Saturday, 11 July 2026, the Daily Trust carried a report headlined: “Mandate hijack: How 16 MDAs got N206bn for constituency projects.” Earlier, on Tuesday, 7 July, the newspaper led with: “How Almajiri Commission included Ogun, Ekiti Roads in N8.4bn Projects.”
The first paragraph of Daily Trust‘s Tuesday story reads: “The National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education (NCAOOSCE) is facing scrutiny over the allocation of ₦8.4 billion for road infrastructure projects in Ogun, Ekiti, and Katsina states, which are outside its educational mandate. The commission has denied responsibility, blaming the National Assembly for inserting these ‘off-mandate’ constituency projects into its 2026 budget, sparking criticism that these allocations misappropriate funds for vulnerable children.”
Whatever Daily Trust uncovered is not a one-off anomaly. It points to a broader pattern in the 2026 budget. The National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS), whose statutory mandate is to regulate Arabic and Islamic education, also got additional muscles to compete with the Federal Ministry of Works in building multibillion-naira roads. NBAIS is allocated funds to construct a 1.5-kilometre road in Ugwolawo, Ofu Local Government Area of Kogi State. It is also to continue the construction of Dantata Road/Saint Louis Road in Kano Central Senatorial District.
More than 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greek storyteller, Aesop, told the story of The Cat and the Mice. It begins with a simple line: “There was once a house that was overrun with mice.” I fear our budget house may have a similar problem. It suspiciously has rats in overwhelming numbers.
So, as the President is investigating one rat, he may soon discover that what confronts him is not a lone intruder but a universe of colonies of mice. If the search is thorough enough, it may also reveal that what the house requires is not just the removal of one rodent but a complete fumigation from the rafters to the basement; from the Villa to the National Assembly.
“A rat catcher has no brothers; a rat catcher is alone,” wrote Viktor Dyk about a century ago. The President can use this probe to sponge the dirt out of his government. But there will be strong resistance to such a search. Rat breeders will remind the President of the story of the farmer who burnt down his entire yam barn because he wanted to catch a mouse. If the President is not the master rodent breeder himself, he will ignore them and press on with the search. We wait to see.
Also published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 20 July, 2026
