NASS CARS, COMFORT AND DISAGREEMENT

Blame the procurement process, not the legislators, argues Josef Omorotionmwan

Conventional wisdom dictates that if you give a man a piece of job, you are under moral obligation to provide the basic implement to do that job. For the duration of that job, the labourer deserves some basic comfort.

In our local farming situation, for instance, where the farm owner is not in the farm, he must tell the labourer where the yams are for him to roast and eat when he becomes hungry. He must point to the direction of the stream where the labourer could go and fetch drinking water. 

Regrettably, this is not what we have today when it comes to the electorate and the elected representatives.

There is this awkward ambivalence: We want the representative to perform at his optimum level – spend sleepless nights to provide perfect representation. But we will be happy if the representative sleeps under the bridge; happier, if he rides a bicycle to work; and happiest, if he is placed below the minimum wage of N30,000 per month. 

With this mind frame, at the inception of every Assembly, there is this violent acrimony about what cars the legislators are given, to the extent that whatever vehicle they get, must be through the back door. 

As usual, the National Assembly (NASS) has found a convenient way of giving those SUVs to the legislators. They are official vehicles meant to facilitate the legislators’ performance of their oversight functions. 

Meanwhile, the vehicles do not bear NASS numbers. Rather, they are registered in the names of the individual legislators, which simply suggests that they were boarded even before they were purchased! Ha ha. 

There is the absurd argument that the Labour Party legislators should have rejected the vehicles. How? Without the prior consent of the legislators, vehicles have been procured for all of them. If the LP legislators rejected their vehicles, what were you going to do with the rejects? Return them to the vendors?

There are limits to opposition. There are abundant policy issues ahead on which they could stand on the roof-top and shout. For now, let’s keep our gunpowder dry.

True, we are told that each legislator has just been assigned a car that costs some N160million. That’s quite some money. But whose fault? Why has the legislator suddenly become the soft target of attack?

Essentially, if a car costs N160million, how much will an airplane cost? We are in a country where those vehicles could have been supplied at twice the original cost, which means that some people, somewhere, must have made a kill out of them. 

Those vehicles were procured long before the legislators arrived Abuja. We are now making it look as if immediately the legislators arrived, we put N160million in their hands to go and buy their vehicles.

Meanwhile, we are, as usual, pursuing the shadow and leaving the substance. The people who made a kill of some billions of Naira are quietly enjoying their loot; and we are busy making the legislators who did not get a kobo out of the deal, look like common criminals. This is a classic case of displaced aggression. It happens all the time.

In the particular case of the vehicles, it is certainly not too late in the day to redirect the war and aim it against the real targets. In this age of the internet, you do not need to travel to Japan to know the basic cost of any Toyota car. Let the correct heads roll.

Give our legislators a chance. They are in Abuja in representative capacity – to do for us all, what we should have ordinarily assembled in Abuja to do for ourselves. It is not a just way of rewarding them by making them look like villains all the time! Our procurement methods are to blame. They habour men and women who hide somewhere with the sole objective of sucking the establishment dry.

The Second Republic took off in October 1979. This writer was one of the pioneer allottees of the 1004 flats in Victoria Island, Lagos. By every standard, those flats were furnished to the teeth. 

Towards the end of March 1981, I returned from work one evening to meet my house in total disarray. A contractor and his team were at work to change every item of furniture in the house, including the rug, the air conditioners and just everything. 

I told the contractor to stop work and that there was nothing wrong with the furniture in the apartment. 

The contractor went on his knees, begging me to allow him to execute the contract. I rushed to the apartment of my immediate boss who also lived in the estate, to report what looked like an invasion. 

I met his house in a similar situation like mine. After listening to me carefully, he asked me to go and sign the contractor’s invoice. They thought I had gone, but I was still behind the door, putting on my shoes. He was telling his friend “This Americana doesn’t understand the system yet. …” And they laughed.

I went back, apparently in shame and when the contractor completed the assignment, I signed the invoice for him as instructed.

What happened here was that the financial year was coming to an end; and every amount in the budget must be squandered to pave way for the coming year’s appropriation. That’s government for you! It is a bundle of waste!

The war against corruption cannot be won by the loss of our sense of history. The sudden displacement of aggression against the political class is not helpful either.

We are quick to point to the politicians of the First Republic, each time we look for the righteous politicians.

So soon, we have forgotten that those politicians also had the good life. We did not give them bicycles and mobylettes to go to work. Even where the legislators were on part-time basis, we gave them the American Chevrolets, which were the best in those days. In fact, they were the land jet of the era.

We recollect how, at the approach of every village along the Benin – Agbor Road in then Midwest Region. Dr. D. N. Oronsaye, our representative in the House of Representatives, used to blast the horn in a special way that produced the sound “papan – papan …”, which we interpreted to mean “Oronsaye … Money boku”. We all ran out to catch a glimpse of him. Those the man waved at, went home to celebrate. 

The First Republic legislators lived in the LEGICO FLATS, which were really exclusive and different from the ordinary. They lived the good life but today, the legislator is looked upon with disdain. What has really changed over time?

The Founding Fathers were right to see political leaders as the mirror into the future. If a leader was well treated, the youths of today would see him as a symbol worth emulating. Such youths would work hard to attain the level of the leader. That’s a sound psychology of human development.

In all we do, the Holy Book provides a guide. We are enjoined to constantly pray for our leaders because it is only when they are at peace that we can be at peace. And in a democracy, leadership begins with those we have freely chosen to represent us. Mutual respect provides a binding therapy.

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada