At a time of severe economic hardship which has forced the Federal Government to deregulate petrol prices, senators have pressed stubbornly ahead with their sickening plan to spend N1.3 billion on 36 sport utility vehicles for themselves. This is the height of thoughtlessness. Unless Nigerians take a resolute stand, legislators and other politicians will continue to rape the treasury, deprive them of the benefits of democracy and treat them with contempt. The stench of avarice oozing from the National Assembly must be removed by curbing the lawmakers’ worst excesses.
For almost 17 years, these have been the unfortunate lot of a docile, divided and often complicit, populace. If most of those who occupied elective and appointive offices – at federal, state and local levels – have been corrupt, visionless and inept, those who found themselves as legislators at every level have been an unmitigated disaster. Utterly selfish, greedy, incompetent, mostly uninformed and contemptuous of the people they purportedly represent, the National Assembly exemplifies the concept of the “worst of us leading the best of us” as Tunde Bakare, a cleric, once described the tragedy of the Nigerian state.
The insensitivity on display is staggering. When the Senate mooted the plan to buy luxury SUVs for 108 senators, barring the senate president and his deputy who control fleets, there was an immediate uproar from Nigerians who had thought that the bruising general election that saw the displacement of the Peoples Democratic Party by the All Progressives Congress as the majority party in the parliament would signal real change. How, many argued, could lawmakers contemplate buying such luxury items that would cost N4.7 billion at a time the country was broke and most states could not pay workers’ salaries? Unfortunately, the senate did not drop the unpopular idea.
But impunity, mixed with greed and a culture of entitlement, has a compelling logic. Justifying the wasteful spending then, Ali Ndume, whose home state of Borno has been the epicentre of the Boko Haram terrorism, with a poverty rate of 81 per cent and 71 per cent adult illiteracy rate, dismissed the sensible suggestion that senators should use their own cars for which they had statutorily obtained car loans, and pool buses for their duties, rather than the deceit of purchasing SUVs for each as “pool cars.”
Confident that no one would ever hold them to account, they have gone ahead to purchase Toyota Land Cruisers at the cost of N36.6 million each and taken delivery of the first batch of 36. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Services, Abdullahi Gobir, denying the purchase of 108 cars, however declared the purchase of 36 so far: “The car we bought is Land Cruiser VXR V8, not V6 …so, I think what we have purchased the car for is very reasonable and sensible.” It is totally unreasonable and perverse! So distanced from the people are they that Gobir actually presented the avaricious politicians as self-sacrificing: “We are supposed to buy 109 cars, but because of paucity of funds, because of our sensitivity and concern for lack of funds, we bought only 36 to go round per state.” The Senate President had earlier taken delivery of N330 million worth of luxury cars in defiance of public outcry.
Amazingly, the world’s highest paid legislators, according to The Economist, are swimming in luxury while national revenues have plunged by over 60 per cent, unemployment and underemployment combined is 29.1 per cent, going by the National Bureau of Statistics, and 27 of the 36 states are virtually bankrupt, unable to meet their monthly wage bills. In the critical age group of 15-34, unemployment rate was 34.4 per cent and underemployment 54.4 per cent by the last quarter of 2015, the NBS reported. Here is a Senate grappling with serious credibility issues, including an ongoing corruption trial of its president, Bukola Saraki, at the Code of Conduct Tribunal and with at least eight others on trial in other courts. The National Assembly held the nation to ransom over the 2016 budget till May, after senators and representatives fiddled with it, reportedly slashing and adding N100 billion to their own favoured items without any discussion or consultation whatsoever with the Executive arm.
Our legislative arm that should be the very fulcrum of democracy has become an unbearable burden to our democracy. From the first inauguration when it purchased computers at five times their market prices to date, the Senate and its counterpart, the House of Representatives, have added very little value to the growth of democracy. They have become parasitic, cornering resources and impoverishing a country where 70 per cent of its population are now living below the poverty threshold compared to the 54 per cent in 1999.
Politicians’ lifestyles should not be far removed from those of the people they represent. The hard times call for austere lifestyles by public office holders. Nigerians must rise up and develop strong civic activism to check the excesses of lawmakers or continue to wallow in poverty and joblessness.
Nigerians should explore and utilise all peaceful, lawful means to resist the continued brazen plundering of their present and future by unconscionable politicians. Only an active, informed and virile populace can enjoy the benefits of democracy. An aloof, complicit populace has allowed a band of insensitive group to kidnap its hard-won freedom to amass stupendous wealth.
The APC, the ruling party, is proving itself no better than the opponent it replaced, given its legislators appetite for lucre. When it comes to their comfort, party lines collapse, but the people who made change possible are watching.
