Gov El’Rufai dares Dogara, publishes security votes, pay slip

Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday disclosed publicly his state’s expenditure, including security votes.

The governor and the House of Representative Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, had last Friday while speaking at the closing ceremony of the National Assembly Management Retreat held in Kaduna, challenged each other to make public what the lawmakers earn and the amount governors’ receive as security vote respectively.

Following that clash, Governor El-Rufai, in a statement released on Monday by his spokesman, Samuel Aruwan, made public the expenses as well as Kaduna State security vote and said that the governor had nothing to hide about them.

The governor also made public a pay slip of his earnings as number one citizen of Kaduna State.

Part of the statement read, “Our attention has been drawn to a challenge by Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, calling on Kaduna State to make public its security votes and local government expenditure.

“This challenge was thrown as a response to Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s request to the National Assembly (NASS) to provide further details on the opaque N115billion 2016 NASS budget. Malam Nasir El-Rufai welcomes this challenge as a necessary step to improve and strengthen our democracy and would like to respond as follows:

“The budgets of all state governments in Nigeria are detailed out and presented at least under the headings of: a. personnel cost, b. overhead, and c. capital expenditure.

“This is unlike the budget of the NASS which is a single line item of over N100billion that divulges zero information or details. NASS can at least break down its own single line budget into the hundreds of line items that are detailed in every state government budget in Nigeria. It is disingenuous to respond to every request for transparency by casting aspersions.”

The governor said Dogara challenged him because he failed to do a proper search, explaining that his government did not only publish its own budget alone but those of all the 23 local governments in the state.

He said, “As regards Kaduna state security votes, once again, if the honourable speaker had run an online search he would have discovered the details of our spending priorities on security as a state government. As our Kaduna Comprehensive Security Architecture (KADCoSA) outlines, the state is directing security spending on four pillars; justice, technology, community engagement and support to security agencies.”

He then gave a breakdown of the money allocated for security as stated specifically in the 2017 budget.

“a. N1.5billion for the procurement & installation of CCTV cameras for monitoring and surveillance towards Reducing Criminal Activities within the Metropolis.

“b. N193million for Procurement of Geo-position Interceptor and location of GSM UMTS System to Check the Trends andIntercept/locate kidnappers’ GSM calls.

“c. N265million for the Procurement of Drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to identify locations of armed bandits in our Forest Reserves across the state and the Establishment of a Forensic Laboratory to assist in determining substantial evidence in cases that otherwise proved difficult in the past.

“d. In addition, N2.6billion is allocated in 2017 to support the network of federal Security Agencies in Kaduna with communications, logistics and materiel.”

He added, “Details of actual spending in 2015 for security and indeed every line item in the state budgets are also publicly available via the annual report of the accountant-general accessible on www.kdsg.gov.ng.”

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