- SERAP to Governors: Account for security votes or face legal action
Nigeria’s security votes, opaque funds allocated monthly to state governors in the name of security have come under renewed scrutiny amid unrelenting violence, deepening poverty, and worsening insecurity across the country. Last week, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) urged the nation’s governors to account for every naira spent as security votes since May 29, 2023, or face legal action. In Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to all 36 state governors dated June 28, SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare wrote, “The framers of the Nigerian Constitution never contemplated opaque spending of public funds as security votes.”
SERAP also requested the governors to invite the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to jointly investigate and monitor these expenditures, warning, “Failure to account for security votes is a grave violation of public trust.” According to SERAP, Nigerian governors and local governments collected over N375 billion in 2021 alone as security votes. Yet, insecurity remains rampant, with the recent Benue massacre underscoring the disconnect between these vast allocations and the lived realities of Nigerians.
The watchdog insists, “Despite the billions of naira yearly budgeted as security votes, many governors are grossly failing to guarantee and ensure the security and welfare of the people in their states.” SERAP warned that if the governors fail to respond within seven days, it will pursue appropriate legal actions to compel compliance. In his incisive analysis, Ayo Opeoluwa traced security votes back to the Second Republic, observing, “Security vote is not new to us, it has always been there. It is a relic of the American presidential system which we borrowed and applied copiously.”
He explains that governors deduct these funds monthly from federal allocations, with some states receiving between N300 million to N700 million each month, depending on size and revenue. Yet, he laments, “The constitution never stated or implied any fund or allocation tagged security votes.” Despite this, he writes, governors treat security votes as personal entitlements: “They are not only failing to utilise the funds judiciously, they are endangering the lives of the same people they swore to protect.” In their landmark paper, “Security Votes in Nigeria: Disguising Stealing from the Public Purse,” Obiamaka, Ifeoma Nwakoby, Josaphat Onwumere, and Chibuike Uche argue, “The perception that security votes are not meant to be accounted for is erroneous.
The Nigerian Constitution invests the legislature with powers to audit all government accounts, including security votes.” However, legislative shortcomings, whether due to inefficiency or undue compromise, have enabled governors to utilise security votes without adequate oversight. The scholars trace the problem to Nigeria’s rentier state structure, where oil revenues empower politicians to govern with minimal accountability to citizens, “Until Nigeria reduces dependence on oil rents, citizens will find it difficult to hold leaders accountable.”
This prevailing culture of unaccountability has eroded the principal-agent relationship between citizens and their elected leaders, normalising the misappropriation of funds meant for security. Opeoluwa observes that Nigeria’s insecurity stems not only from corruption but also from a limited understanding of security as being deeply connected to socioeconomic stability. He argues, “These days, we don’t talk about conventional security in terms of crisis, we talk about critical security and what I call strategic security… crisis arises from the prevailing socioeconomic situation in a state.” Poverty, unemployment, religious fanaticism, illiteracy, and economic marginalisation are, in his words, “critical security situations.”
Yet governors continue to use security votes for discretionary spending rather than addressing these root causes. He asks pointedly, “How do we explain the fact that the states in the northeast were getting security votes before the inception of Boko Haram, they saw it when it was incubating and there was nothing they could do even at that embryonic stage?” A deeper contradiction lies in Nigeria’s federal structure. Despite billions allocated to governors monthly, security apparatuses remain under federal control. As Opeoluwa explains, “A governor cannot control the Commissioner of Police in his state in spite of the security votes he receives… He has no say in the security of his state, decisions as regards this comes from Abuja.” This constitution tend to encourage a lack of accountability, “They owe no one explanation on how they spend their security votes because they are not responsible for securing their constituency.”
The World Bank recently classified Nigeria among economies in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS). It cited insecurity, poverty, and governance failures as intertwined crises driving millions into acute food insecurity and pushing the nation further into fragility. Both SERAP and Opeoluwa agree on urgent reforms. SERAP insists on full disclosure and independent investigations. Opeoluwa adds, “If we are not ready to take the long route which is always inevitable except we are not interested in the present social contract, then we should consider making the funds more transparent and hold the governors accountable for it.”
Ultimately, he argues, Nigeria should renegotiate its constitution to enable state police, making governors directly responsible for security in their domains. Without such systemic reforms, security votes will remain what they have become: billions spent with no security to show for it, enriching rulers while the governed remain in peril.
