Buhari Reportedly Scraps Security Vote to Top Federal Officials

Muhammadu Buhari

Reports have it that Buhari in his bid to cut the wastage of governmental funds has scrapped the allocation of security votes to federal officials.

The Buhari administration has ended the controversial practice of routine security vote allocation to top government, military and security officials, SaharaReporters has learned.

Sources in the Finance and Budget ministries also said that the order extends to the President himself, and the Vice President.

In recent decades, security votes became popular among politicians, military officers and public officers, especially presidents and state governors, as a vehicle for siphoning public funds. As the nation became more and more enmeshed in official graft, however, the practice began to generate tremendous public criticism.

Observers say it was a relic from the long years of military rule, but became even more prevalent as from the Second Republic, and assumed a more dramatic and wider form in 1999. Apart from principal federal government officials, state governors and local government chairmen often allocate huge sums of money to their offices as ‘security’ votes, even as the country grew increasingly insecure.

Government sources now confirm that as soon as the Buhari administration took power last year, a clear indication was given of the new direction when President Muhammadu Buhari asked accounting officers in Aso Rock to keep an eye on his own expenses and that of his deputy, noting that they both intended to run a transparent presidency, with zero-tolerance for corruption. Subsequently, the President directed that there would be no routine allocation of security votes to he or anyone else as had been the practice since 1983.

For state governors, security votes often run into billions of Naira annually in many states. While the actual amount that normally goes to the president was always sketchy, there have been clear indications that it runs into several billions of Naira, sometimes on a monthly basis.

For example, under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, several security vote accounts have been discovered not just in the office of the National Security Adviser, the State Security Service and the military, but also in accounts of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation.