Campaigners on Monday urged Nigeria to stop handing out millions of dollars to tackle unspecified security issues with no questions asked, arguing the practice fuels corruption and conflict.
Nigeria is facing widespread unrest, from Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency in the northeast to a resurgence of violence in a long-running dispute over land and resources in central states.
At the same time troops have been deployed to curb rising crime from cattle rustling and kidnapping gangs in the north, as well as to stop attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in the south.
Nigeria’s defence budget is estimated to be some $1.2 billion this year, but Transparency International (TI) estimated more than $670 million extra is handed out annually without proper oversight.
Known as “security votes,” the funds comprise cash payments made to designated federal, state and local government officials for discretionary spending.
They also dwarf recent and promised US and British security and counter-terrorism assistance, TI said in a report, “Camouflaged Cash: How ‘Security Votes’ Fuel Corruption in Nigeria”.
“Nigeria would arguably not need such assistance if it curtailed the use of security votes and reprogrammed them into the country’s formal defence and security budget,” it said.
The group’s head of defence and security, Katherine Dixon, called security votes “one of the most durable forms of corruption operating in Nigeria today”.
Instead of helping to end conflict, they provided corrupt officials with “an easy-to-use and entirely hidden slush fund”, she added.
“Corruption in the crucial sector of defence and security plays right into the hands of those who seek to sow the seeds of instability and terror,” she said.
“It leaves armed forces under-resourced in the fight against Boko Haram and feeds groups who may destabilise the elections.”
