Last week, the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja declared that the failure of public officers to give an account of security votes entrusted to them amounts to stealing or criminal misappropriation, adding that it is akin to genocide. This formed part of the grounds for the court’s affirmation of the conviction of a former governor of Taraba State, Reverend Jolly Nyame, whom the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) had earlier convicted and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment on June 30. According to Justice Emmanuel Agim who read the lead judgment, there is a pervasive tendency by public officers to regard or treat security votes given to them for security of their states as their personal entitlements. He argued that any public officer in charge of such funds must either account for them or return them to the public coffers, and that failure to do so amounted to stealing.
Agim said: “If the recipient of such funds cannot account for the use of such funds for the purpose it was meant and has not returned same to the government treasury, then that is clear stealing of public funds or criminal breach of trust or criminal misappropriation of funds. The appellant, who recognised that the Taraba State people were faced with the threat of famine and that they were already suffering untold hardship due to lack of grains or the escalating costs of grains, approved the release of the funds to purchase grains to distribute to Taraba people, but diverted the funds for his personal use and did not buy the grains, leaving the Taraba people in their untold hardship. In view of the dangerous impact of the crime of public office corruption on the state security and the generality of the people, it comes within the class of crimes against humanity like genocide, terrorism and large-scale violation of human rights.”
It is indeed difficult to contest the decision of the Court of Appeal. It is certainly part of the tragedy of Nigerian nationhood that a state chief executive would treat the funds entrusted to his care for performing perhaps the most important function of government in a modern state as personal funds to be dispensed as he deems fit. There is something inherently disturbing in the idea that a state governor needs the pronouncement of a court of law before he can realise or accept the fact that security votes or indeed any kind of public funds must be accounted for. Is a governor in a democratic state supposed to be an emperor, answerable to nobody but himself and toying with the people’s destiny through criminal mismanagement of public funds? Should any governor need any reminding that he is in office to better the lots of the people and not to pauperise and make life hellish for them through the diversion of security votes to his personal ends? It would be unthinkable to suggest that since 1999, security votes have never been accounted for by state governors.
There is of course no doubting the point that security issues are complex, and that nowhere in the world do people in government provide all the fine details of security issues to the public. If, for instance, at a national level, a state undertakes the execution of its foes, how does anyone put that down? The world over, security issues attract a degree of official secrecy. In many climes, there is a body within the legislature saddled with hearing briefings on such high-level security issues, the implication being that security expenditure is vetted with a view to ascertaining that public funds have been deployed in the public interest. Nowhere does a president or governor have the constitutional latitude to treat the funds devoted to the security of his or her state as personal funds to be expended on, say, consorts and personal building projects or businesses. In this regard, governors in this clime are duty-bound to account for every kobo spent on security issues through the constitutionally outlined channels. Nigeria being a federation, a governor is duty-bound to present the books to the state House of Assembly and allow the representatives of the people to vet them. He is equally bound to give details of security and other expenses to the people, although admittedly without the finer details of security expenses that might jeopardise the interests of the state if put in the public domain. Those finer details must, of course, be presented before a select few in the state House of Assembly.
Given the foregoing, we cannot but commend the judgment of the Court of Appeal. For far too long, security votes have apparently been looted under the false claim that governors are not required to account for them. This regime of lawlessness has to stop and those found to have perpetrated such crimes must be prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law. On their part, the state houses of assembly must stop being rubber-stamp legislatures. They must hold governors to account on all public expenses and deploy the constitutional remedies when infractions have been committed. Waiting on the federal anti-corruption agencies to bust financial and other crimes committed by governors is immoral, defeatist and illegal.
