N160m SUVs: Senators’ planned purchase amidst poverty, height of insensitivity

It is no longer news that the Nigerian Senate has concluded arrangements to purchase imported SUV vehicles worth N160m for its 109 membership. 

What is news now may be is that this is happening amidst widespread poverty among the nation’s citizenry.

It is now an open secret that an average Nigerian can no longer afford three square meals a day since the removal of fuel subsidy on May 29,this year and our representatives at the National Assembly are swimming  in affluence.

 What an irony.

We gathered and rightly too that the option of getting the vehicles in-country was dangled before our lawmakers and the proposal was fiercely turned down and rejected.

At least INNOSON Motors, our own vehicle manufacturing company would have done justice to that project and the country’s economy would have gained some value. That would have also added meaning to the crusade for Local content.

A lot of multinational companies operating in Nigeria have it as a deliberate policy that every material or tool used in their Nigerian operations must come from their home office. 

In other words, all the raw materials used in their outstations outside their nations must come from their local economy to boost development.

The reverse is the case in Nigeria. If our Governnment cannot initiate and uphold that, then who will?

Charity, they say, should begin at home. And the Senate would have spearheaded that by patronising our local motor manufacturing companies in the spirit of leading by example.

How else can we display patriotism or nationalism if we cannot appreciate our own. N160m multiplied by 109 members, and by extension House of Representatives members, can go a long way to addressing the poverty rate in the country. You can imagine the impact that would have done to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

It is often said that if you don’t tell people that you are here, they will pretend they don’t know and continue to forge ahead.

If we as Nigerians cannot source our materials in-country or patronise our locally made products, who will?

The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio while trying to defend the disservice said the lawmakers deserve the N160m imported SUVs because roads leading to their constituencies, communities and districts are in deplorable conditions, therefore it is normal that they have such exotic vehicles at the expense of the poor masses.

Some Senators joined in the defence, querying why anybody should oppose such lofty idea.

Some aggrieved Nigerians suggested sarcastically that the lawmakers should have asked for helicopters to visit their constituents instead of SUVs.

The question now is whose duty is it to maintain the roads? If government  that controls and manages our commonwealth can attempt to avoid bad roads, who then will bell the cat?

Is it our old mothers in the villages or the poor of the poorest along the streets, as they call them now, that will maintain or reconstruct our deplorable roads?

Does that not amount to failure on the part of our leaders?

Nigeria at a time was described as the poverty capital of the black race, when the country ranks top among world oil producers.

Our human resources are equal to none among comity of states, so why should the country have business with poverty? 

The only missing link, people say, is leadership and there had not been vacuum in leadership in the country since 1960 when the nation gained  independence from Britain.

India and the rest that equally colonised by the Colonial Masters have since left Nigeria behind.

Back here in Africa, the countries we often refer to as small countries, such as Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, amongst others are today doing better than Nigeria, the self-acclaimed Giant of Africa.

What is it that we are not doing properly? Democracy is the best form of government, it has been said, but why is our own wobbling 63 years after independence?

Why can’t we put our heads together and up our game?

As far as we are concerned, Nigeria has no serious obstacle stopping her from being great apart from man made challenges, planned and executed by self.

It is our considered opinion that all things being equal, the country can be great again. But this cannot be possible when we are shooting ourselves on the foot, by refusing to encourage and patronise our locally made products.

Technology is in Aba, Kano, Ibadan, Rivers and what have you.

It is up to us to grab it with open hands by encouraging our own. We have also said it severally that technology is home-grown and not imported.

We therefore implore our political leaders to put on their thinking cap and harness the abundant potentials that abound in the country. Posterity won’t forgive us if we fail.