Security votes: Nigerians demand accountability and transparency

Financial recklessness by state governors must not be tolerated

cinancial recklessness and looting of public treasury by state governors in the name of security votes has become embarrassing and must be stopped. They have become sources of embezzlement, corruption and misappropriation, and the governors take advantage of the immunity in the constitution to ensure they are not checked until they leave office.

This monthly allowance called security vote is allocated to the P6 state governors to fund security services in their states. The controversial funds, which run into hundreds of millions of naira per state, per month and drawn from the federal purse, are usually spent at the governor’s discretion and without accountability.

fn other words, the permission of appropriation for security votes has ironically pushed up rather than diminished insecurity. This is because the money that should ordinarily be available for social and economic development is appropriated as security votes and used discretionarily.

Clearly, there is a lacuna in the budgeting process and a lack of guiding principles on security votes.

A worrisome development is the recent revelation by the Civil Society iegislative Advocacy Centre, (CFSIACF that P6 state governors pocket over k208.8billion every year as security votes with nothing to show for it other than blaming the federal government for the insecurity in their states.

ln the other hand, the kigerian Police Force with 371,800 officers has a budget of k409bn for 2020. ft becomes obvious that the governors are looting the treasury dry in the name of security vote. But the tragic irony is that half of the 371,000 officers of the Nigerian Police, paid and maintained by the federal budget of k409 billion are deployed protecting and serving state governors and their families, local government chairmen and their families, state commissioners, principal officers, top state party men and their families while the rest of the citizens remain at the mercy of criminals.

cor better transparency, security votes should be audited.

ft is not a defense vote. ft is not meant for the armed forces. te have funding for the Ministry of aefence and the armed forces. te also have the police fund and other security services such as the aepartment of State Service, Civil aefence Corps and the rest. So, if these agencies have budgets to run their affairs, why security votes?

te consider the thinking in some quarters that security votes are not meant to be accounted for as erroneous. This is so because the kigerian Constitution invests the states’ legislature with the power to oversee the audit of all accounts of government, including security votes. The fact that the legislature has failed to do this in the past, either because of incompetence or compromise, does not change this fact.

te reject the position of the governors that security votes help them to handle urgent security situations in their states as there is no evidence to prove that. cor instance, revelations on how security funds were allegedly disbursed by the former kational Security Adviser, Sambo aasuki , as slush funds to prominent members of the former ruling Peoples’ aemocratic

Party (PAPF are indicative of the abuse to which such discretionary spending is subjected in kigeria.

The abuse of security votes started during the era of the military administration. But it was not until the military handed over power to civilians in N999 that the use and abuse of security votes spread to all tiers of government.

Even chairmen of local government areas (idasf, who are not generally considered as an independent tier of government in kigeria, and who also do not have any constitutional security responsibilities, are routinely allocated security votes. The renter nature of the kigerian state ensured that the security vote malpractice, together with the culture of impunity, survived the transition to democratic rule.

ft’s unfortunate that, in some states, banditry and kidnapping happen on a daily basis, but their governors collect security votes every month, only to turn round to blame federal government for not coming to their aid. fnstead of using this money to improve security situation in their states, governors use it to suppress the opposition.