Governor Nasir El-Rufai has released details
of his security votes after he was
challenged by Speaker Yakubu Dogara.
The Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai has released details of his security vote expenditure after he was challenged by the speaker of the House of Representaives,
Yakubu Dogara.
Dogara had at the closing ceremony of a retreat for the management of the National
Assembly in Kaduna on Friday challenged El- Rufai and other state Governors to publish
details of their security votes after they had accused the National Assembly of aiding corruption by its failure to publish their internal budget.
“I will like to challenge him (El-Rufai) to champion this cause for transparency in the budgetary process from the National Assembly to other arms of government beginning with the judiciary.
“What do they spend monthly as security votes, and if they can publish what happens to local government funds under their
jurisdictions, that will help our discussion going forward.” Dogara said.
Governor El-Rufai has now fulfilled his own part and has now thrown the challenge back at Dogara to publish the budget of the
National Assembly.
Read below the details of Kaduna security vote pay slip:
Our attention has been drawn to a challenge by Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, calling on Kaduna
State to make public its Security Votes and Local Government expenditure. This challenge was thrown as a response to
Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s request to the National Assembly (NASS) to provide further details on the opaque N115 billion (One
Hundred and Fifteen Billion Naira) 2016 NASS budget. Malam Nasir El-Rufai welcomes this challenge as a necessary step to improve and strengthen our democracy and would like to respond as follows:
The budgets of all state governments in Nigeria are detailed out and presented at
least under the headings of:
a. personnel cost b. overhead, and
c. capital expenditure
This is unlike the budget of the National Assembly which is a single line item of over
N100 billion that divulges zero information or details. NASS can at least break down its own single line budget into the hundreds of
line items that are detailed in every state government budget in Nigeria. It is disingenuous to respond to every request
for transparency by casting aspersions.
On our part, the Kaduna State government has consistently made public all its budget
details. In 2016, in an unprecedented step, the State published not only its own budget, but also that of all the 23 Local Government Councils online on the www.openkaduna.com.ngwebsite. The Local Government budgets provide details of the recurrent and capital spending of every
single LG in a transparent manner.
The proposed 2017 LG Budgets, currently before the State Assembly, are also already online
on the same website, and on
www.kdsg.gov.ng.Approved State Budgets 2016-2017 can be found on http://openkaduna.com.ng/Budget/approved- budget. We invite the Right Honourable Speaker to download and peruse at his
pleasure.
As regards Kaduna State Security Votes, once again, if the Honourable Speaker had run an
online search he would have discovered the details of our spending priorities on security
as a State Government. As our
KadunaComprehensive Security Architecture (KADCoSA) outlines, the State is directing
security spending on four pillars; Justice, Technology, Community Engagement and Support to Security Agencies. The 2017
budget details specific amounts: N1.5bn (one and half billion naira) for the Procurement & Installation of CCTV Cameras for Monitoring and Surveillancetowards
Reducing Criminal Activities within the Metropolis.
b. N193m (one hundred and ninety-three million naira) for Procurement of Geo-
position Interceptor and location of GSM UMTS System to Check the Trends andIntercept/locate kidnappers’ GSM calls.
c. N265m (two hundred and sixty-five million naira) for the Procurement of Drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to identify locations of armed bandits in our
Forest Reserves across the state and the Establishment of a Forensic Laboratory to
assist in determining substantial evidence in cases that otherwise proved difficult in the
past.
d. In addition, N2.6bn (two billion and six hundred million naira) is allocated in 2017
to support the network of federal Security Agencies in Kaduna with communications, logistics and materiel.
Details of actual spending in 2015 for security and indeed every line item in the state budgets are also publicly available via
the annual report of the Accountant-Generalaccessible.
