ANNUAL WASTE OF N240 BN ON SECURITY VOTES: CACOL TACKLES GOVERNMENT

LAGOS, Nigeria – The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, has called for a review of the budgetary allocation usually called security votes by the federal, state and local governments across the country. CACOL made the call while responding to a recent revelation by Transparency International (TI) that Federal and State Governments spend over N240 billion on security votes annually purportedly for tackling unexpected security issues.  The anti-graft group further expressed regret that the disbursement of these huge sums of cash are not usually accounted for, nor subject to legislative oversight and independent audit.

 

Commenting on the revelation, Mr. Debo Adeniran, the Executive Chairman of CACOL asked the Government to capture these allocations as security allowances appropriated for by chief executives of the three tiers of government in annual budgetary estimates. He further stated that security votes were supposed to be complementary budgetary allocations- for the purpose of responding to miscellaneous and unexpected security challenges-in addition to the usual allocation to the government’s security agencies.

 

According to him: “The current arrangement whereby chief executives of various tiers of government disburse security votes- which is a carry-over from the military era- as it pleases them creates room for massive corruption.

 

“While we implore the Government to be judicious in its handling of security vote’s allocation, we also call for a proper audit into previously spent security votes to ensure there are no fraudulent activities involved and also to ensure that these funds were used exactly for the purpose they were meant for.We insist that anybody found culpable of being corrupt in the handling of security votes should be made to face the full wrath of the law through proper prosecution to serve as a deterrent to incumbent office holders.”