Condemnation greeted the dissipation of the National Assembly’s members on vehicles amid a bad economy imposing untold hardship on the common man has drawn the reaction of the Senate.
The House of Representatives members, 360 of them are about to take delivery of Sports Utility Vehicles each at N160m per one totalling N57.6 billion.
The imminent acquisition has been met by widespread censure.
The Senate is embarking on similar venture with 109 Senators set to possess exotic vehicles at the expense of the federal government.
Its Chairman, Committee on Services, Sunday Karimi, on Tuesday at a press conference rationalized this on Tuesday.
In Karimi’s defence, he 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, 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 Cruiser is the cost and durability.
“Before they came up with this. It is not the decisions of the senators alone, we analysed 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.
“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?”
