Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has said no security
vote is appropriated to him by his government.
El-Rufai made the disclosure while reacting to a statement
by spokesperson of the House of Representatives, Abdulrazak Namadas, that what El-Rufai
published was the security budget of Kaduna and not his security votes.
El-Rufai’s spokesperson, Samuel Aruwan, on Thursday said the
state’s budget specified what was voted to security agencies and nothing was
given to the governor.
Aruwan noted that the Kaduna’s security funding is not
operated like the national assembly where everything is “opaque”.
He said, “The Kaduna state government has presented details
of its security budget. What was presented represents the only security vote
for the entire government.
“As the figures show, there is no security vote for the
governor of Kaduna state. This may be a shock to those used to the notion of
security votes as barely disguised slush funds, but we do not operate such a
system in Kaduna.
“Our budgets specify what is voted as assistance to security
agencies, and its expenditure is properly recorded and accounted for. These are
not monies given to or spent by the governor.
“If the leaders of the NASS have security votes allocated to
or personally collected by them, they might wish to disclose such.
“Our security spending does not operate like the NASS system
of sharing public funds in such an opaque fashion that even NASS members do not
know how their entire budget is broken down or what the leadership gets as its
‘running costs’.
“The figures in the pay slips presented for the Honourable
Speaker are in stark contrast to the declaration by The Economist regarding the
earnings of NASS members. One of the claims cannot be right.
“However, notwithstanding the intemperate response of the
spokesman of the house of representatives, the demand that the NASS budget be
made public will not go away.
“It is not personal, and there is a strong civic
constituency that is demanding it. The sooner all of us in public life
recognised that the game has changed, and that segments of civil society and
indeed everyday citizens of Nigeria, are much more aware, astute and advanced
than the state of our politics, the better for our democratic health.”
By Seun Opejobi
