Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has raised a major alarm over a controversial ₦6.44 billion allocation in the 2026 budget earmarked for a “Special Presidential Support Group for the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers”.
The opposition leader pointed out the glaring discrepancy that the massive sum was budgeted and approved long after the Super Eagles had already been officially eliminated from the 2026 World Cup qualification campaign.
In a biting statement issued on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku questioned the integrity of the nation’s entire budgeting system, describing the development as a damning indictment of the President Bola Tinubu administration.
A Budget for a Defunct Campaign
An analysis of the 2026 Appropriation Act shows that the ₦6.44 billion allocation is listed as a capital project under the National Sports Commission (NSC).
However, Nigeria’s qualification campaign came to a crushing end months prior, on November 16, 2025, when the Super Eagles lost 4-3 on penalties to the Democratic Republic of Congo in Rabat, Morocco. Despite this definitive exit, the multi-billion-naira allocation remained completely untouched throughout the legislative process, from when President Tinubu presented the budget in December 2025 to its signing into law in April 2026.
“How does a serious government budget ₦6.44 billion for presidential support for World Cup qualifiers after the country had already been eliminated?” Atiku queried. “What competition was the money intended to support? Who inserted the provision, who approved it, and who was expected to benefit from an expenditure whose stated purpose had already ceased to exist?”
Atiku argued that the retention of the funds reinforces a growing public suspicion that the national budget has been turned into “a warehouse for dubious expenditures, fiscal waste, and allocations without any defensible public purpose.”
The PFIPC Connection and Institutional Failures
The former Vice President linked the World Cup budget discrepancy to the unfolding Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) scandal.
The PFIPC—which the Presidency recently disowned as a completely “fake” and “non-existent” agency—was somehow allocated ₦1.3 billion under the Presidency in the same 2026 budget. The controversy escalated on Tuesday following the court-ordered hunt for the self-acclaimed Director-General of the council, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, who has accused Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila of bribery and extortion.
Atiku rejected the presidency’s attempt to frame the scandal as a simple case of individual impersonation. He argued that a “phantom” agency could not have successfully acquired physical offices at the Federal Secretariat, opened Central Bank accounts, recruited over 300 personnel, and secured billions in official budget allocations without high-level government collaboration or a catastrophic collapse of institutional oversight.
“The scandal is not merely that one man allegedly impersonated public authority,” Atiku stated. “The greater scandal is that the Tinubu administration allegedly opened the doors of the Nigerian state to him, allowed him to acquire the appearance and privileges of official legitimacy, and permitted him to interact with institutions and diplomatic interests.”
Calls for an Independent Investigation
Labeling the arrest of Adeyemi as a potential cover-up attempt to shield high-ranking administration officials, Atiku called for an immediate, independent, and transparent investigation into both the PFIPC saga and the ₦6.44 billion World Cup budget allocation.
He warned that unless a thorough, neutral probe is conducted to uncover who inserted and approved these questionable line items, Nigeria’s public financial management will continue to be viewed with deep international and local skepticism.
Ayodele Quadri
Correspondent
