{"id":81852,"date":"2026-01-19T05:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T05:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=81852"},"modified":"2026-01-19T05:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T05:30:20","slug":"serap-sues-governors-wike-over-security-vote-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2026\/01\/19\/serap-sues-governors-wike-over-security-vote-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"SERAP Sues Governors, Wike Over Security Vote Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Immaculata<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has filed a suit against the governors of Nigeria\u2019s 36 states and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, over alleged failure to account for billions of naira spent as security votes since May 29, 2023.<\/p>\n<p>The suit, filed last Friday at the Federal High Court in Abuja, seeks an order compelling the defendants to publicly disclose details of security vote expenditures, including allocations, implementation status and measures taken to improve security across the states and the FCT.<\/p>\n<p>SERAP cited reports that over N400 billion is budgeted annually nationwide for security votes, with 10 governors alone reportedly earmarking about N140 billion for 2026, despite worsening insecurity in several states.<\/p>\n<p>In the suit filed by its lawyers, SERAP argued that Nigerians have a right to know how public funds meant to protect lives and property are utilised. The group warned that secrecy surrounding security votes increases the risk of misappropriation and undermines accountability.<\/p>\n<p>SERAP also contended that failure to disclose security vote spending violates constitutional provisions, anti-corruption laws and Nigeria\u2019s international obligations. No hearing date has been fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Immaculata The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has filed a suit against the governors of Nigeria\u2019s 36 states and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, over alleged failure to account for billions of naira spent as security votes since May 29, 2023. The suit, filed last Friday at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":81853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81854,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81852\/revisions\/81854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}