The controversial decision by the lower house to gift its members exotic cars running into millions of Naira, and which have no bearing on their legislative duties, point to an institution convulsed by greed. Worse still, it paints the grotesque specter of the institutional greed in Nigeria.
In a country of staggering oil riches, vast, arable lands and immense human and material resources, 57.6 billion Naira is chicken feed.
However, when it is to be spent on 360 sports utility vehicles for 360 legislators, the implications become clear and dire in a country where about a hundred million people scrape below the poverty line daily.
Each vehicle is projected to cost over 150 million Naira and, according to the leadership of the house, it is to enable the legislators carry out their constitutional duties.
Already, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has rushed to court to throw a spanner in the works of such an expensive and expansive jamboree, but little will come out of SERAP’s legal exertions in a country where phony claims of federalism mix with poisonous claims of democracy.
The way a country where waste and dysfunction are the norm is run bears reflection.
For years, Nigeria’s National Assembly which consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives has weathered accusations of extravagance.
Branded as overpaid and underworked by many Nigerians, the legislators have always had to defend themselves from accusations that they allocate too much money to themselves.
Successive sessions of the National Assembly have been accused of being appendages to the executive in a clear conspiracy to milk Nigerians dry.
This accusation often repeated to a sickening degree largely focuses on what the legislators earn versus what they lend their legislation to. Some Nigerians have cynically commented that all the lawmakers ever use their considerable legislative powers to do is legislate obscene salaries for themselves.
But what is at stake? Who are the legislators really serving?
The legislators themselves have typically argued that all they get as perks from their high offices are necessary to maintain the dignity of their office.
For example, in response to the brouhaha raised over the outrageously expensive vehicles, they have justified the same saying they need them to ply bad Nigerian roads.
What makes that claim utterly ridiculous and even laughable is the fact that Nigerian roads are so bad because the legislators have failed to do their bit to arrest the dilapidation of Nigerian roads.
In a country where millions of children are out of school, and millions of people live on less than a dollar a day, to spend so much on cars and even more on other perks for do- nothing legislators is beyond shocking; it is scandalous.
Nigeria’s democratic experiment and federalism remains what it is – a disastrous fraud.
Set up to be what it is in the hope that each of the three arms of government can check the excesses of the others, a flawed constitution and corrupt politicians have ensured that it has remained a mirage.
While the executive manipulates the legislature into doing its bidding, sweetening the deal from time to time in what can only be properly described as an elaborate conspiracy, both combine to muscle the judiciary into submission.
Thus, all manner of legislations and lawlessness and political lackeys go through the National Assembly with very little to show in terms of robust representation.
The National Assembly in Nigeria has had some luminous moments in the past, none more so than when the ill-advised and odious third term bid by former President Olusegun Obasanjo breathed its last in the hands of the legislators. But those moments have been few and far between.
There have been fisticuffs, sell-outs, shocking statements and a lot to leave Nigerians with the unmistakable feeling that they always manage to elect the self-serving as their legislators. Or do they?
Given that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has made the conduct of shambolic elections its stock-in-trade, Nigerians must sometimes be forgiven for registering surprise at the presence of some of those who supposedly represent them at the National Assembly.
It has become something of a scandal that Nigerian legislators have become synonymous with ostentation and misrepresentation.
Many of them cannot even account for the millions they receive every year in funds for constituency projects.
It is then little wonder that democracy has struggled badly in the country.
With misfiring legislators who put their purses and paunches before their primary constituents and constituencies, democracy will continue to search in vain for true heroes.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
