Turn budgets into weapons of security accountability
Nigeria’s security crisis has become an exhausting national tragedy. From Zamfara to Plateau, the story repeats: lives lost, communities razed, children kidnapped, soldiers ambushed. Yet every year, the National Assembly approves record-breaking defence budgets, ₦80 billion in 1999, ₦6 trillion in 2025, without corresponding gains in safety or institutional integrity. What Nigerians now face is not just a failure of force, but a failure of oversight. The legislature, constitutionally empowered as guardian of public funds and democratic accountability, has become a silent witness to the erosion of both.
“The implications go beyond bureaucracy. Every naira lost to misappropriation translates into weapons not bought, salaries unpaid, or intelligence unacted upon.”
The 10th National Assembly must decide whether it will remain a ceremonial observer or reclaim its role as a constitutional counterweight. For too long, the legislature’s tools, oversight hearings, investigative committees, and budget scrutiny have been deployed as theatre rather than enforcement. Summonses are issued, reports are written, and the cycle of outrage ends in silence. Meanwhile, corruption metastasises in the defence sector: ghost contracts, padded procurement, and security votes with no traceable outcomes.
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The reality is brutal. Nigeria’s security expenditure has grown exponentially, but its return on investment is almost nil. The military struggles to maintain logistics, police formations are under-equipped, and intelligence coordination remains fractured. Behind this dysfunction lies a structural flaw: the National Assembly has the power to approve funds but has failed to tie that power to measurable results.
This must change and it can. The Annual Appropriation Act, if sharpened into a performance-enforcing instrument, could become Nigeria’s most powerful tool for national security reform. The Constitution grants the National Assembly exclusive control over public spending (Sections 59 and 80 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended). Every kobo withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund depends on legislative authorisation. That leverage is not symbolic; it is sovereign.
The 10th Assembly should convert the Appropriation Act from a routine budget authorisation into a Conditional Security Performance Contract. This means that defence and security agencies would no longer receive automatic disbursements; instead, funds would be released in tranches, strictly contingent on compliance with measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs should include improved inter-agency coordination, verified progress in intelligence-led operations, adherence to human rights standards, and transparent procurement processes.
To ensure enforceability, three new conditional clauses must anchor future appropriations.
First, an audit compliance trigger: no new capital allocations should be released to any military or intelligence agency until all prior-year audit queries have been resolved. This would breathe life into the otherwise toothless Federal Audit Service Act (2023).
Second, a Transparency and Disclosure Mandate: agencies must publish quarterly, itemised expenditure reports subject to independent review by the Public Accounts Committee and civil society monitors.
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Third, a Performance and Accountability Clause: operational funds should be tied to field results, not abstract metrics but concrete indicators such as territory regained, incidents reduced, and response times improved.
Such conditions would not only deter waste but also transform the legislature’s oversight function into a credible enforcement mechanism. They would end the culture of blank-cheque budgeting that has turned security allocations into political patronage pools.
Of course, this reform requires more than new clauses; it demands new courage. The National Assembly has historically been reluctant to challenge the Executive on defence matters, citing “national security” as an excuse for opacity. But secrecy has not secured the nation; it has shielded corruption. If the 10th Assembly truly believes in accountability, it must be willing to withhold or redirect funds from non-performing agencies, even under executive pressure.
The implications go beyond bureaucracy. Every naira lost to misappropriation translates into weapons not bought, salaries unpaid, or intelligence unacted upon. For ordinary Nigerians, that means more nights of fear, more empty farmlands, and more widows and orphans. Security failure is not abstract; it is lived in the silence of villages where the government has vanished.
The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and the Speaker of the House, Tajudeen Abbas, have both spoken eloquently about competence, accountability, and purposeful governance. Yet eloquence without enforcement is impotence. If the legislature’s words are to matter, they must be backed by institutional redesign. This begins by professionalising oversight committees, appointing members with technical expertise in defence, intelligence, and finance, and staffing them with independent analysts who can track procurement and audit data in real time. It also requires passing a robust Whistleblower Protection Act to shield insiders who expose corruption in the security sector.
Critics may argue that conditioning budgets could slow down urgent operations. But Nigeria’s problem is not insufficient spending; it is undisciplined spending. Oversight does not weaken security; it strengthens it by ensuring that funds achieve their intended purpose. Countries that overcame entrenched insecurity, Colombia, Indonesia, and even post-apartheid South Africa, did so not by endlessly expanding budgets, but by enforcing accountability.
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Nigeria’s 10th Assembly has a narrow window to prove that democracy can still deliver public safety. By converting the Appropriation Act into an accountability weapon, it can compel the Executive to align funding with performance and integrity. The alternative is unthinkable: a future where insecurity becomes a budget line item, not a national emergency.
The path forward is clear. Fiscal leverage must become a moral instrument. Appropriations must buy results, not rhetoric. And the National Assembly must rediscover its constitutional courage, not just to pass laws, but to protect lives.
If it succeeds, history will not remember this legislature for its speeches, but for the moment it finally decided that Nigerians deserved value for the security they paid for with their taxes, and too often, with their blood.
