by Azeez Adeniyi

Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai on Thursday said no security vote was budgeted for him.

El-Rufai after the Speaker of the House Representatives, Yakubu Dogara challenged him to publish his security votes and not the security budget of Kaduna.

In a statement by his spokesperson, Samuel Aruwan, El-Rufai said the state’s budget specified what was voted to security agencies and nothing was given to the governor.

[Read Also: El-Rufai dares Dogara, releases pay slip, security vote]

He described the National Assembly budget as “opaque”.

“The Kaduna state government has presented details of its security budget. What was presented represents the only security vote for the entire government,” he said.

“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’.

[Read Also: Provide monthly details of security vote, Reps tell El-Rufai]

“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.”

He said Nigerians will not stop demanding that the National Assembly budget be made public.

“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,” he further said.

“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.”