Former Vice President and prominent political figure Atiku Abubakar has publicly demanded an independent investigation into an alleged N6.44bn budgeted for the 2026 World Cup.
According to Atiku, the budgeted N6.44bn contained in the 2026 budget was earmarked for a “Special Presidential Support Group for the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers”, even though Nigeria’s national football team, the Super Eagles, had already been eliminated from the tournament qualifications.
The details of the allegation, which were made public on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, in a statement by Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, point to a massive oversight or deliberate fiscal mismanagement within the national budget.
The Super Eagles of Nigeria were officially knocked out of the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification run in November 2025.
However, the federal budget containing this N6.44 billion support group allocation was prepared, presented, and considered by the National Assembly nearly a month after the team’s elimination was sealed.
Atiku slammed the Tinubu-led administration, querying the logic and transparency of the allocation.
“How does a serious government budget N6.44 billion for presidential support for World Cup qualifiers after the country had already been eliminated? 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 queried.
He described the allocation as not merely an example of poor judgment but a damning indictment of the integrity of the budgeting process, saying it reinforced public suspicion that the national budget had become a warehouse for dubious expenditures, fiscal waste and allocations without any defensible public purpose.
Atiku situated the World Cup allocation within the wider controversy surrounding the phantom Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), accusing the President Bola Tinubu administration of a plot to manipulate the narrative around the scandal, shield government officials from scrutiny, and redirect blame towards the opposition. FamousQuotations
He described the recent arrest of the self-styled director general of the PFIPC, Adeniyi Adeyemi, as a calculated move allegedly intended to extract statements that could be deployed to implicate opposition figures rather than uncover the full truth behind the scandal.
Atiku said the PFIPC controversy could not be reduced to the alleged actions of Adeyemi alone, noting that an organisation the Presidency now claims was fictitious allegedly penetrated the highest levels of government, obtained diplomatic recognition and accreditation, recruited more than 300 personnel, secured office accommodation at the Federal Secretariat, and reportedly received budgetary allocations, including an alleged N1.3 billion provision in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
He maintained that such extensive operations could not have occurred without either active official collaboration or a catastrophic breakdown of oversight across multiple government institutions.
