The Senate, on Tuesday, defended the purchase of 190 Sports Utility Vehicles, SUVs, for its members despite the country’s crumpled economic situation, arguing that even ministers have more official vehicles than lawmakers.
The Red Chamber’s plan to purchase new official cars for its members had raised Nigerians’ eyebrows, with a civil rights group, the Social Economic Right and Accountability Project (SERAP), filing a court suit seeking an interlocutory injunction to stop the lawmakers from proceeding with their plan.
But reacting to the development at a news conference on Tuesday, the Chairman of the Committee on Senate Services, Sunday Karimi, wondered why Nigerians only pick on lawmakers while ignoring ministers, who have about four official vehicles.
Karimi said, “Somebody who is a minister has more than three Land Cruisers, a Prado, and other vehicles, and you are not asking them questions; why us?
“These vehicles that you see go to Nigerian roads today. If I go home once, to my senatorial district, I come back spending a lot on my vehicles because our roads are bad.
“I said the decision that we took on using the Land Cruiser was the cost and durability.”
Although Karimi refused to disclose the actual cost of the vehicles, he, however, noted that Senators preferred the imported SUVs to locally manufactured ones after their comparative analyses.
“Before they came up with this, It was not the decisions of the senators alone that we analyzed when arriving at Land Cruisers.
“It was based on a comparative analysis of the cost of technical issues and durability on Nigerian roads.
“We want something that we can maintain for another four years and the issue of buying vehicles from the National Assembly, you know it is a recurring issue, it occurs every assembly, it will always come up”
Fazed that Nigerians only pick on them, Senator Karimi further explained that even lawmakers at the state level already have their official cars made available to them even before the inauguration.
“If you got to state houses of assembly today, check out most of them before they were even inaugurated; the governor would have bought vehicles waiting for them, even local government chairmen.
“I drove the vehicle my local government chairman uses, so why the National Assembly?”
On why the vehicles are coming at an exorbitant price, the lawmaker said it was because the National Assembly owed the suppliers about N16bn.
“I am the chairman of the Senate Service. When I came into the senate, when they gave me their liability, they had a liability of over N16 billion that was made up of different vehicles from the 7th, 8th, and 9th Assemblies.
“If you are a businessman and you supplied vehicles for somebody in 2014 or 2015 or so and up until now they owed you,
“I am not trying to defend anybody; if you see them selling Land Cruisers in the market, let’s say it is a cost; you don’t expect somebody who will supply it to supply it at the price they are selling it at in the market.
“It has to leave a margin, and the civil service for supply allowed for a 25% margin plus that and VAT, and I think that VAT is 7.5. Out of that 25% margin, they will still remove 5% tax from it.
“You are telling someone to supply, and he may even not end up making payment for three years. If you want him to supply at the price they are selling in the market, it is not possible.”
