The Nigerian police have received slightly over N2 trillion in budget allocation in the past six years, according to BudgIT Nigeria, – a civic tech organization with focus on raising the standards of transparency, citizen engagement and accountability most especially in public finance.
However, the Nigerian Police is popularly known across the nation for its brutality, extortion, and absolute disregard for human lives and human rights.
Nigeria has been engulfed in protests for over a week against the menace of the SARS operatives across the country, which led to its disbandment on Sunday by the Inspector General of Police.
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The protesters are also demanding an end to police brutality, justice for the victims of police extrajudicial killings, unconditional release of the arrested protesters as well as increased salary for police personnel.
Disclosing the budget allocation in a tweet on Monday, BudgIT wrote, “the Nigerian police is hellbent on their flagrant display of recklessness! Despite the allocation of over N2TN in 6yrs, the agency continues to display discretionary use of power with no regard for human lives!”
According to the data released by BudgIT, Nigerian Police budget allocation has been on a steady increase since 2017, after a slight decline in 2016, as shown below.
- 2015 – N321.32 billion
- 2016 – N308.92 billion
- 2017 – N313.51 billion
- 2018 – N324.22 billion
- 2019 – N366.13 billion
- 2020 – N409.39 billion
The Nigerian police is hellbent on their flagrant display of recklessness!
Despite the allocation of over N2TN in 6yrs, the agency continues to display discretionary use of power with no regard for human lives!@MBuhari, public funds are meant to protect not kill!#EndSARS pic.twitter.com/dT2JxWqoq0
— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) October 11, 2020
About BudgIT
Founded in 2011, BudgIT is a civic organization that applies technology to intersect citizen engagement with institutional improvement, to facilitate societal change. A pioneer in the field of social advocacy melded with technology, BudgIT uses an array of tech tools to simplify the budget and matters of public spending for citizens, with the primary aim of raising standard of transparency and accountability in government. BudgIT is in constant partnership with civil society, public institutions and the media, chiefly in the areas of fiscal analyses, civic technology and data representation.
By; Ifunanya Ikueze
