Nigerians’ poverty versus our legislators’ N160m jeeps

Certainly, the talk about the National Assembly members’ pricey jeeps has not ended. It is not likely to end soon. It shouldn’t. The more we talk, debate, argue and even shout about it, the better. The decision by the Abuja-based legislators to go ahead with that kind of fiscal exuberance at a time such as this, when Nigerians are walking the streets with long faces and going begging and hungry, scorns the collective Nigerian identity.

It certainly is a matter of choice, and choice means different things to different people. “Choice is the ability to do otherwise,” says James A. Anderson, author of “Communication Theories: Epistemological Foundations”. We only get to know how important or powerful we are when we find ourselves in a place where we must choose between.  Surely, the ebullient legislators believe it is their choice (perhaps, even right) to ride in the best automobile that their exalted position in Nigeria entitles them to. It is their choice to a life of luxury as their exalted positions demand. By the way, we once heard something that sounded like such people were not in Abuja to display poverty. And that means that such persons must live lives that display the opposite of poverty. Now, they have their choice.

And that is where these people meet and part ways with the rest of us Nigerians on matters of choice. If they had their way, Nigerians would do everything to stop the waste of the funds that have been used to procure those vehicles. It must be made clear to them that the money involved is public money, no matter how anyone, including the legislators themselves, rationalise their action and defend the indefensible. But, in the words of Anderson, Nigerians have no choice in this, which is why we were not able to do otherwise, such as stopping the purchase of the cars.

So, in political decisions, including the question of how collective resources should be spent, it has become clear to Nigerians that they have no choice. This is because in the reckoning of the elected and appointed officials, the citizens are incapable of doing anything contrary to the selfish tendencies of the people who rode on their votes into the place to turn around and show their true selves once they arrive in Abuja.

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This is how over the years, Nigerians’ rights and freedoms have been abridged by those who should lead in the battle to do otherwise. Consider the excuse given by the Senators and the Honourable Members for their insistence on having this particular model of SUV. Nigerian roads are bad, and this is the simplest way to put it.

Our roads long ago became what we Nigerians, in our creative ingenuity, labelled “death traps’’. No doubt, since this appellation was given to our road network, tens of thousands of Nigerians have perished on our highways, and it looks as if that is normal. The carnage on our roads, largely brought about by official neglect, touches no one to force them into action, genuine action.

But the strange thing is that rather than getting the government to rebuild our roads so they can serve as the public good that they are, our lawmakers would rather take a strange way out of a national calamity given the number of Nigerians who have perished needlessly on our roads. According to them, because of the state of the roads in Nigeria today, their legislative functions would suffer greatly if they were to ride in the same types of vehicles that every Harry, Tom and Dick is riding.  Many Nigerians failed to arrive at their villages because their vehicles fell into ditches on the roads; others died because the cars they were travelling in fell as the driver tried to avoid potholes.

Do these people know really that what they did was simply to postpone Nigeria’s march to freedom? In the context of today’s harsh economic environment that Nigerians are swimming in, these Abuja men and women do not know how many Nigerian children they have sent to bed tonight on empty stomachs. That is public finance. We must know that for every unproductive spending made out of the public purse, there is a genuine need that gets delayed and, in the process, gets enlarged. So, imagine a few men and women riding in those exotic cars with the tag of legislators and everyone else emerging from their traumas to adore the cars that our lawmakers have come to display as the fellows making laws for the rest of the people.

The purpose of government is largely the provision of public goods – those that once they are provided for one person, become available to all. But in our clime, the approach here tends to be the opposite: kill the public goods so that restricted access to private goods can confer a sense of power on those who can afford them. Our country cannot continue to run on this model.

Which development model has prescribed the solution to a nation’s bad road network as the purchase of the latest SUVs for its legislators so they can move about easily on the very bad roads?  When did the display of exotic cars for parliamentarians become a solution to a national poverty challenge that even the blind can now notice?

Or, how does the purchase of SUVs for lawmakers remove the tag of “death traps” from our roads, and change them to the types of roads Nigerians see on TV in foreign lands? Or, are ordinary Nigerians doomed to witness driving on such roads only on TV? At the same time, our politicians cruise on them in the latest vehicles that rolled out of auto assembly plants in America, Europe and Asia.