Theme: Finance
27 November, London – A court ruling this week that paves the way for civil society in Nigeria to challenge senior politicians over their secretive spending of billions of Nigerian Naira has been praised by Transparency International.
Transparency International and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC) in Nigeria have previously called for the scrapping of the unaccountable and secretive “security vote” spending – one of the most durable forms of corruption in Nigeria—saying that they fail to provide real security for citizens.
The security votes issue was explored in a joint report by the groups in May 2018. Camouflaged Cash estimates that security votes in Nigeria total around $670 million annually – more than the annual budget of the Nigerian Army.
Responding to the court decision, Steve Francis OBE, Director of Transparency International’s Defence & Security Programme said:
“This is an important moment in the campaign for transparency in defence and security spending in Nigeria, as well as government accountability more generally. Civil society in Nigeria, including Transparency International’s colleagues in CISLAC, deserve praise for successfully challenging in the courts the government’s refusal to explain how billions of Nigerian Naira were spent over the last twenty years. We see this as another important step in bringing about more openness and accountability in how the country spends taxpayer money on its citizens’ security and defence.”
Contact:
Harvey Gavin
Harvey.gavin@transparency.org.uk
+44 (0)20 3096 7695
++44 (0)79 6456 0340
Ahead of the 2019 Presidential elections in Nigeria, Transparency International and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC) are calling on candidates to commit to scrapping the unaccountable and secretive “security vote” spending – one of the most durable forms of corruption in Nigeria—saying that they fail to provide real security for citizens.
Read the full report below and download ‘Annex A: Federal Security Vote Data’ here and ‘Annex B: State Security Vote Data’ here.
The theme of this report is the analysis of corruption risks in the financial and economic activities of the defence and security sectors, based on a review of the audit reports and law enforcement bodies’ reports published in the period from January 2010 to October 2011. The intention was to combine the approaches of external, governmental, and internal revisors, auditors and law enforcement agencies, in order to highlight ‘red flags’ and warning of the methods of corruption in a simplified form. The second purpose of the report is to discuss the role of internal audit in preventing and reducing corruption in the defence and security sectors. It is not a primary role of internal audit to detect corruption, but it is a role more people expect internal audit to undertake. There is, therefore, an expectations gap that needs to be filled given that internal audit has no legal responsibility to counter corruption.
One of the areas of corruption risk we are often asked about is commercial businesses that are owned by the military. This is a surprisingly common phenomenon and is open to a wide range of potential abuses. As there is extremely limited information on such businesses, we have taken a first step to provide an overview of information that is in the public domain on this topic, through this initial review by Kevin Goh and Julia Muravska. They have focused on a few very different countries with extensive military-owned businesses—China, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia—and looked at national efforts of reform. In addition, they have looked at one of the major areas of abuse—exploitation of natural resource assets by the military—in oil, mineral, forestry, agriculture, fisheries and land.
A transparent and detailed budget that is available to the public is key to holding governments accountable to their citizens. Unfortunately, in many countries the defence budgeting process remains opaque and far removed from civilian oversight. The report identifies the main aspects of defence budget transparency, including an overview of current practices and the risks that arise at each stage of the budgeting process. It also ranks 93 countries according to their defence budget transparency. ‘The Transparency of Defence Budgets’ found that most of the 93 countries studied disclose too little defence and security spending information to their public.