The Federal Government is spending 14 percent more on security this year than it did in 2020, thereby reducing the money available for schools, roads, and other critical infrastructure, yet insecurity continues to heighten in Africa’s biggest economy.
Since December 2020, hundreds of students have been kidnapped from their schools in the northern region of Nigeria. Also last month, dozens of university students were abducted in Kaduna State. Some of them were reported to have been killed, while most of them were later released.
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This fuels concern that with a renewed focus on security more resources that could deliver better value to the country could be allocated to the security sector which is yielding limited value.
Yet Nigeria faces serious economic challenges such as high unemployment, inflation, fragile growth, and widespread poverty and resources needed to stimulate other key economic sectors to get diverted to curbing security challenges.
“Several other sectors like education and health will definitely suffer but it is understandable due to the increased crime and terror across the country. All we are just asking for is that there should be more scrutiny since other sectors are suffering,” Abel Akeni, head of research and policy at BudgIT, a civic tech organisation said.
Akeni also added that the minimum the government can do is make sure that those funds are utilised for security and not diverted.
An analysis of the data from the 2021 budget shows that out of a total of N13.08 trillion, the security sector was allocated N1.97 trillion, representing a 14 percent increase from N1.78 trillion in 2020. While key sectors like education, health, power and agriculture were allocated N742.7 billion, N546.9 billion, N204.4 billion and N179.4 billion respectively.
Damilola Adewale, a Lagos-based economic analyst said poor funding of these critical sectors means the quality of education, healthcare services, the standard of living and transportation infrastructure will be weak both at the national and subnational level.
Also, BudgIT noted that various non-security related government agencies now request and receive allocations for “Security Votes”, an opaque feature of the Nigerian security ecosystem devoid of accountability.
“In the 2021 budget, a total of 117 federal agencies received allocations for “Security Votes” worth N24.3 billion, despite many of these agencies already having allocations for “security charges” to cover each agency’s security needs,” BudgIT stated in a press statement.
It further added that at least 316 duplicated capital projects worth N39.5 billion, with 115 of those duplicate projects occurring in the Ministry of Health. “Even worse, agencies now receive allocations for capital projects they cannot execute.”
In order to strike a balance, Omotola Abimbola, a macro and fixed-income analyst at Lagos-based Chapel Hill Denham advised that the government should make more revenue-focused reforms that will improve their ability to generate revenue and free up more resources to invest in other sectors.
