Lawmakers justify buying themselves Land Cruisers saying the state of Nigeria's roads are bad

NIGERIAN lawmakers have justified the recent purchase of 360 brand new sports utility vehicles (SUVs) for themselves at a time when the nation is groaning under the yoke of hyper-inflation saying the poor state of the country's roads made it necessary.

Last week, the 360 members of the lower chamber of the National Assembly shocked the nation when they voted to buy themselves new cars. Their decision has been highly criticised and already, the Socio Economic Rights and Accountability Project (Serap) has asked a federal high court in Lagos to stop the lawmakers from taking delivery of the cars pending the hearing and determination of a suit it has filed opposing the move.

Serap's application for an interim and interlocutory injunction followed reports that members of the House of Representatives are set to procure and take delivery of SUVs valued at N57.6bn ($67.63m). Apparently, each of the imported SUVs would cost about N160m ($187,874) at a time when most Nigerians are feeling the impact of runaway inflation and the minimum wage is N30,000 ($35.22) a month

Reacting to the development, Senator Sunday Karimi, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Services, pointed out that Nigerians were picking on lawmakers but ignoring ministers who got about four official vehicles. He further justified the purchases saying the poor state of Nigeria's toads made SUVs a necessity.

Senator Karimi said: “Somebody that is a minister has more than three Land Cruisers, Prado and other vehicles and you are not asking them questions, why us? These vehicles that you see, go to Nigeria 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 Land Cruisers is the cost and durability. It is not the decisions of the senators alone, we analysed arriving at Land Cruisers and 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 for the National Assembly is a recurring issue, it occurs every assembly and will always come up. If you go 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."