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Nigerian lawmakers have once again demonstrated their insensitivity and love for expensive road machines despite the huge economic challenges facing Africa’s most populous nation.
At a time the local automotive industry is struggling for survival and pleading for patronage, the lawmakers are calling the bluff of advocates of made-in-Nigeria vehicles to be recognized as the official vehicles for government officials.
Already known for their profligacy and expensive lifestyles in a country where the average citizen is struggling for survival, the Nigerian Senate (the upper arm of the National Assembly), recently took delivery of 36 units of Toyota Land Cruiser VXR V8 at a whopping N36.5 million per unit.
Justifying the purchase of the expensive cars at a time of great economic crisis in the country, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Services, Ibrahim Gobir, said on Tuesday: “The car we bought is Land Cruiser VXR V8, not V6. The showroom price is about N31 million minimum and then when you add 10 per cent tax it becomes 36.5 million.
“In fact you can go to the internet and download it; it is very simple, we can give you the website, and you can see them. So, I think what we have purchased the car for is very reasonable.
“A lot has been happening within the last two days concerning the issue of cars, car loan, appropriation and cost of the cars and we feel it necessary to come out and inform the public about it.
“This is so, so that people can have a better understanding of the whole thing to avoid wrong perception as being created among Nigerians.
“That we bought 108 cars is totally wrong; it is not correct. We bought 36 cars. These 36 cars, each senator in each state is either a chairman or a vice chairman and we gave one car to each state to share as utility car. So, we don’t have money to buy 108 cars.
“We had a closed session and they agreed that we should give one car per state; we sat down and agreed who needs the car most and that was what happened. “We are supposed to buy 109 cars but because of the paucity of funds, because of our sensitivity and concern for lack of funds, we bought only 36 to go round per state.
“Come to think of it, there is no minister that hasn’t got about three, four cars – one Land Cruiser, maybe a back-up and two Hilux cars.
“There is no director in the civil service that hasn’t got a car. There is no permanent secretary that hasn’t got a Land Cruiser.
“In fact, every House of Assembly member has either a Prado or a Land Cruiser and here is a senator you say he cannot have one Land Cruiser.”
