Since assuming office on May 29 last year, President Buhari has made cutting expenditure one of the main features of his government. Ministers have been forced to cut back on their spending, while the size of government entourages have been significantly reduced but members of the National Assembly are planning to defy this stance with the purchase of new vehicles for themselves.
Members of both chambers have faulted President Buhari’s opposition to the plan of the legislature to purchase cars for 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives. In August, the National Assembly collected between N7m (£23,536) and N8m (£26,900) as car loans but the lawmakers said the new 469 cars that they planned to buy would be used for oversight functions.
On Wednesday in a media parley, President Buhari had expressed reservations over the N47.5bn (£160m) 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.
Urging Nigerians to take the issue to court, President Buhari said if he could reject a N400m (£1.34m) bill for his personal cars as a president, the lawmakers should do the same thing. He noted that the lawmakers had already collected N100bn as allowances for the purchase of cars.
President Buhari said: “N47.5bn for vehicles for the National Assembly members? If I can turn down N400m for vehicles in the presidency, I think we don’t need new cars and we can manage the old ones because of the economy.”
However, some senators, defended the plan to purchase cars for National Assembly members, saying the loans they collected were already being deducted from their monthly salaries. Senate president Bukola Saraki, however, has denied that the senators had planned to buy cars for the sum quoted by the president.
Saraki said he would not allow the upper legislative chamber spend N4.7bn, N47bn or N50bn on official cars under his leadership. He added that all the details of the 2016 budget would be made available for public debate and scrutiny.
One principal officer in the Senate and a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, wondered why President Buhari would think that spending 1% of the nation’s N4tn recurrent expenditure to buy utility vehicles for a whole arm of government was too much. An opposition Peoples Democratic Party senator from the southeast, also insisted that the project vehicles were legitimate rights of members of the National Assembly.
The principal official said: “I am sure the president is not expecting that we will use our personal vehicles, bought with loans, to carry out oversight functions within and outside Abuja. Or does he want us to rely on ministries, departments and agencies, under our supervision to provide logistics whenever we want to carry out our official duties?
“We are looking forward to the meeting proposed by Mr President and we will let him realise the need for us to have the project vehicles if we are really expected to carry out necessary oversight functions in line with the anti-corruption crusade of the current administration.”
He argued that if ministers, permanent secretaries, directors and heads of federal government’s agencies were allocated official vehicles for project inspection, there was nothing wrong for the senators and representatives to have their own project vehicles. The senator vowed that members of the National Assembly would resist any attempt by the executive arm of government to deny them an opportunity to make use of official vehicles for their committee activities.
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