There has been a recent uproar in the country after it emerged that the senators voted the sum towards the purchase of vehicles for themselves at a time when civil servants are owed salary arrears. Most of Nigeria's state governors owe their workers and several of them have pointed out that they simply cannot afford the N18,000 minimum monthly wage.
Responding to the criticism, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, said the cars are for committee assignments and are not meant for individual senators. Nigeria's 109 senators are among the highest paid legislators in the world and of late, there have been calls from them to take a pay cut and reduce their numerous allowances.
Critics say the latest ploy by senate leaders to purchase the cars in the guise of buying them for committees is a ploy to circumvent the monetisation policy of government which forbids the purchasing of official cars for public officials. Under the policy, no new vehicles should be purchased by any agency of government for use by public officials.
Rather, public officers and political office holders are to receive 250% of their annual basic salary as a motor vehicle loan, which translates to N5.07m for each senator and N545,000,000m for the 109 of them.
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Sources at the National Assembly, however, said the senators got these loans before also proceeding to acquire these new Toyota Land Cruisers. However, Senator Abdullahi added that the cars in senate president Senator Bukola Saraki's convoy are so old that they are begging for replacement.
This is despite the fact that they were only supplied shortly before the end of the last legislative session in June. Also, Senator Saraki has 10 cars in his convoy despite the fact that the law only provides for him to have six.
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