Governor questions Dogara’s pay slips

Dogara, on April 11, published his pay slips from October 2016 to March 2017 after El-Rufai challenged the National Assembly to make details of its expenditure public.

“The figures in the pay slips presented for the Honorable Speaker are in stark contrast to the declaration by The Economist regarding the earnings of NASS members. One of the claims cannot be right,” El-Rufai said via a statement by his spokesman, Samuel Aruwan.

“The Kaduna State Government has presented details of its security budget. What was presented represents the only security vote for the entire government. As the figures show, there is no security vote for the Governor of Kaduna State.

“This may be a shock to those used to the notion of security votes as barely disguised slush funds, but we do not operate such a system in Kaduna.

“Our budgets specify what is voted as assistance to security agencies, and its expenditure is properly recorded and accounted for. These are not monies given to or spent by the governor.

“If the leaders of the NASS have security votes allocated to or personally collected by them, they might wish to disclose such.

“Our security spending does not operate like the NASS system of sharing public funds in such an opaque fashion that even NASS members do not know how their entire budget is broken down or what the leadership gets as its ‘running costs’.

“The House of Representatives has responded with predictable tetchiness to a simple and clear demand that details of the National Assembly budget be made public.

“It is inconceivable that an important institution, vested by the Constitution with representation, lawmaking and oversight powers, has for at least seven years ignored the imperative to set an example of transparency, despite being severally urged to do so.

“Despite the rush to personal attacks on a matter of public policy, we cannot allow the enthronement of the republic of distraction. It is important that everyone who is interested in protecting and advancing democratic discourse should stay focused on the issue.

“It is strange that persons entrusted with high office will justify their abdication of the responsibility to be transparent in such cavalier fashion. We don’t believe that most of our esteemed legislators will construe a demand for transparency as aimed at undermining the National Assembly.

“However, notwithstanding the intemperate response of the spokesman of the House of Representatives, the demand that the NASS budget be made public will not go away. It is not personal, and there is a strong civic constituency that is demanding it.

“The sooner all of us in public life recognized that the game has changed, and that segments of civil society and indeed everyday citizens of Nigeria, are much more aware, astute and advanced than the state of our politics, the better for our democratic health," he added.

Dogara had responded to El-Rufai’s call by urging him and other governors to be transparent about their security votes.