Our representatives’ N6.1billion cars

While we all shared in the collective grief over what happened at Ozubulu, Anambra State last week, a disclosure by the House of Representatives’ spokesman last week escaped the attention of most Nigerians.

That was my conclusion based on the fact that a critique of the information has not generated much traction among us.

Painful that we could still be divided over a simple matter like whether a protest is justified or not or its necessity, we ignored much more serious issues that deserve our attention. Across the globe, people protest over different things and nobody bothers them, sad for us that what we witnessed in the last government could still happen under the Buhari government wherein security agents harassed and molested protesters they are paid to protect.

But I digress. Our dear House of Representatives are purchasing new cars for the entire 360 members of the chamber at a total cost of N6.1 billion. This came to the fore at a time when the federal government just told us that it has spent N6.2 billion on feeding school pupils in 14 states so far this year. So with just a difference of N100 million, our representatives are going to be driving Peugeot 508 cars at an amount that could feed pupils in at least 14 states for eight months.

Abdulrazak Namdas, the house spokesperson, told journalists last week and it has not been denied till the time of writing this so the usual excuse of ‘I was misquoted’ does not apply. At a tidy cost of N17 million per unit, 200 cars have been delivered as at the time Mr. Namdas was talking with reporters. “Over 200 cars have been supplied out of 360, and we are still getting more. Every member will get their car by the end of this year,” he said.

From an initial estimate of N10 million per car, it shot up to N17 and in the interest of full disclosure, Namdas cheekily informed us that the exchange rate crisis that our country had faced is responsible for the upward review of the cars’ cost.

Faced with a barrage of criticisms, the national assembly earlier this year released its budget for 2017. Remember, this is a budget with a deficit of N2.35 trillion and that was before the supplementary budget the federal government presented about two weeks ago, which will increase the deficit. The total budget for the two chambers – Senate and House of Representatives – is N125 billion from N115 billion in 2016.

With the assistance of a more mathematics savvy colleague while writing this, we discovered that it costs Nigeria N266.524 million to keep our 469 national assembly members for 2017. We have 109 senators and 360 representatives and while they can make the argument that part of the budget will be spent on the bureaucrats working with them and some capital projects as the budget shows, it is still what the country will spent to make them comfortable this year.

By the way, the budget they released had no detail, as it was just headings without the specifics of how the money would be spent. This is a continuation of a game that our legislators are well adept in playing; remember how they hoodwinked us years back with the monetization issue claiming that cars were bought for the committees of the two chambers and not members.Interestingly there was no pretence this time around and they were brazen enough to tell us at a time when recession is our closest companion, that a whopping N6.1 billion will be spent on cars to be driven on our perpetually bad roads that they have refused to appropriate money for.

The optics of such insensitivity is apparently lost on them just as magisterial impunity has become a way of life for them. Included in this car bazaar is the speaker whose convoy is filled with cars already, you need to see these people and their long convoys on our roads.

Last week, the senate president sacked 90 staff or redeployed them, as his image-makers tried to spin it later, and you wonder how many staff a public official needs to function efficiently. Don’t forget we still have the regular constituency projects wherein over N1 trillion had been spent in the last 10 years by both chambers.

We should condemn this purchase totally as our sybaritic representatives do not need this luxury at such austere time in Nigeria. Suffused in so much opulence, there is no way these people could be in tune with the average Nigerian whose companion is recession. They don’t need these cars.