There are strong indications that President Muhammadu Buhari might be heading for a head-on collision with the National Assembly (NASS), if he does anything to interfere with the plans by the legislative arm of government to purchase exotic cars for its members. While the National Assembly is in the process of awarding contracts for the purchase of various brands of vehicles for use by its 469 members, President Buhari said the current cash crunch biting the country makes it unreasonable. The National Assembly members had, in August, collected between N7 million and N8 million each as car loans totalling about N100 billion in addition to other allowances such as constituency, relocation and wardrobe among others. The president had rejected plans to purchase exotic cars worth N400million for him about the same time.
For the president, expenses on luxury goods negate the mood and economic realities of the nation. The President had, in his maiden Presidential Media Chat last week, expressed reservation over the N47.5bn reportedly proposed for National Assembly members’ cars. He had said he would hold a closed-door meeting with the National Assembly members because of the plan. Sharp reactions from federal lawmakers opposed the move to get them reverse the plan. The Senate President Bukola Saraki denied that the senators had planned to buy official cars in the region quoted by the President under his leadership. Whilst the debate over the actual amount budgeted is on, it is not clear whether the President meant N4.7bn when he made reference to N47bn on Wednesday night. We sympathise with NASS members who claimed the loans they collected were already being deducted from their monthly salaries and that to expect them to use their personal cars for committee duties would be unfair.
Much as we do not want lawmakers to rely on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), under their supervision, to provide logistics whenever they carry out their official duties, we are aware of logistic and other allowances built into committee activities in the National Assembly just as agencies also finance some activities of the committees. We do not want the National Assembly members to lose sight of public perception of them as the drainpipe of this democracy because of their jumbo pay packet coupled with the selfishness inherent in the corrupt practise where Nigerian lawmakers go away with their official vehicles after four years, when the cars are assumed to have expired value. But President Buhari is altruistic in his assessment of the profligacy of the last 16 years.
We are looking forward to the meeting proposed by Mr. President and a rapprochement reached. Both arms of government must respect the need for checks and balances under the principles of separation of powers with the people as the ultimate beneficiaries. We hope that our lawmakers will prove themselves to be an integral part of the change we all crave for by voting them in. To alienate the people in the name of procuring project vehicles to carry out necessary oversight functions in line with the anti-corruption crusade is a nullity when we have given them loans for the same purpose. What will be a greater disaster is if like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the former Central Bank of Nigeria governor (now Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II) sometime alleged that 25 percent of the nation’s budget is used to service only the National Assembly.
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