Senators Under Threat Over Jeeps, Don’t Bring Them Home, Constituents Warn

Written by: Oluwole Ige and Johnson Babajide

The uproar that greeted the purchase of 36 luxury SUVs as project vehicles of the Senate committees continued to reverberate at the weekend, following indications that senators from the Northern part of the country have been barred from driving home the vehicles.

Investigations by the Sunday Tribune in Abuja confirmed that many of the Northern senators, who received the cars ,are in dilemma over driving them home because of threat text messages they have been receiving from their constituents.

Sources in the Senate told Sunday Tribune that immediately the Senate came up with explanations last week to the effect that it only purchased 36 cars on one senator per state, messages started bombarding phones of the Northern senators, telling them not to attempt driving the cars in the streets of the north.

Perhaps, as a foretaste of the intention of constituents in the North to deal with any senator that defies the order, some unknown persons were said to have attacked the Chairman, Senate Committee on Navy, Senator Hamman Misau, in Bauchi last week.

Sources told the Sunday Tribune that the lawmakers had since decided to keep the new vehicles in Abuja to avoid trouble.

“Many of our colleagues from the North have received text messages threatening to deal with them if they attempt driving the Land Cruiser V8 SUVs on the streets. The tones of the text messages were strong enough, such that nobody is actually ready to dare them,” a source in the Senate said.

The Senate on Tuesday last week had clarified reports about the purchase of its project vehicles, saying that the upper chamber only bought 36 cars, not 108.

Chairman, Senate Services Committee, Senator Ibrahim Gobir, who made the clarification, told newsmen in the Senate that the decision was taken that only 36 cars instead of 108 would be purchased and that the cars would go round at one senator per state.

Senator Gobir said that the public was apparently misinformed about the purchase of the cars, saying that each of the Toyota Land cruiser VXR V8 costs $90,000, while the final figure for the purchase amounted to N36.5 million each, after tax was added.

The senator said: “A lot has been happening within the last two days concerning the issue of cars vis a vis car loan, and cost of the car and we feel it is necessary to come out and inform the public about what it is. So that people can have a better understanding of the whole thing to avoid wrong perception as being created among Nigerians.

“First, I would like to say that the issue that we bought 108 cars is totally wrong, It is not correct. We bought 36 cars. These 36 cars because each senator in each state is either a chairman or a vice chairman and we gave one car to each state.

“We don’t have money to buy 108 cars. On the issue of buying cars without appropriation, this is totally wrong because this has been appropriated for in the 2015 budget.

“So we used what we have in the 2015 budget to buy the 36 cars so that it can go round to each state.

“On the issue of the cost of the car, the showroom price, the cost of the car is N36.5m and we are surprised. The car we bought is Land Cruiser VXR V8 not V6. Therefore the showroom price is about N31m minimum and when you put 10 per cent tax, it becomes N36.5 million.

“In fact you can go to the internet and download it. It is very simple. We can give you the website, we have several items we downloaded from the internet, you can see them. This particular car costs about $90,000.

“By the time you multiply that, you will have about N28.8m, so when you add tax, you will end up with about N37m. So I think what we have purchased the car for is very reasonable and sensitive to economic challenge.

“We are supposed to buy 109 cars but because of the paucity of funds, because of our sensitivity and concern for lack of funds, we bought only 36 to go round per state.

“There is no minister that hasn’t got about three or four cars. One land cruiser, maybe a backup and two Hilux cars. There is no director in the civil service that hasn’t got a car. There is no permanent secretary that hasn’t got a land cruiser.

“In fact, every House of Assembly (member) has either a Prado or a Land Cruiser and here is a senator, you say he cannot have one Land Cruiser.

“On the issue of car loan, let me tell you, the car loan that we were given, we have not taken, hear it from me, we did not take the car loan. No senator was given car loan, we did not take it.

“Currently, we have money for 36 vehicles and we procured 36. We had a close session and we all agreed that we should give one car per state, we sat down and agreed, who needs the car most and that was what happened.”