Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Transparency International Defence and Security Project (TI-DSP) have emphasised the need for scrutiny and reforms to address transparency and accountability gaps within the country’s defence/security sector.

They made the call at the two-day Defence and Security Sector Anti-Corruption Training, organised by CISLAC, yesterday, in Lagos. Highlighting the urgency, the Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Musa (Rafsanjani) emphasised the need for ongoing reform initiatives amid evolving security threats.

He added that despite recent reforms, the sector faces challenges rooted in a history of military rule and exceptionalism, contributing to corruption drivers like opaque procurement processes, inter-agency rivalry and inflated contracts.

“More importantly, a recent analysis indicated that over 80 per cent of military personnel have been deployed in internal security across the 36 states of the federation with whopping sums budgeted for insecurity. This goes to show that the prolonged fight against insecurity, though very expensive, is yet to record the desired impact or effectiveness,” he said.

Rafsanjani stressed that corruption within the sector has far-reaching consequences, hindering counter-terrorism operations, empowering insurgency and jeopardising democratic governance mechanisms, noting that recent high-profile corruption cases, often vanishing from public discourse, raise concerns about accountability and the influence of political interests.

“Some state governors have found the engagement of foreign military contractors and private security services as an enabler to avoid transparency and accountability in the spending of their security votes. By September 2019, Transparency International (TI) raised the alarm that over N241.2 billion yearly security votes were not accounted for by the government in Nigeria.

“Giving this background, the need for independent oversight and immediate reform in the defence/security sector cannot be over-emphasised, particularly with respect to financial transparency, gender inclusion, as well as operational disparities, as these have significantly impacted the overall integrity and efficiency of the sector,” he added.