Nigerian Roads Are Bad – Senate Justifies Purchase Of SUVs Worth N57.6bn For Its Members

The Nigerian Senate has defended its position for the purchase of 360 sport utility vehicles for members.

However, the Red Chamber remained silent on the exact price of each vehicle, explaining that members prefer imported SUVs to domestic SUVs.

VerseNews reports that at a press conference on Tuesday, the Chairman of the Senate Service, Sunday Karimi, reacted to the situation, noting that Nigerians harassed the lawmakers but ignored the ministers who had about four official vehicles.

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 Nigerian 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.”

He explained further, “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. “

The deputy also explained that even at the state level, members of Congress have access to official vehicles.

Karimi added, “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?”

Karimi justified the high cost of the vehicles because the National Assembly owed the supplier about N16 billion.

He said, “I am the chairman of, the senate service. When I came into the senate, when they gave me their liability, they had a liability of over N16 billion that is made up of different vehicles of the 7th, 8th and 9th Assemblies.