Douglas Anele
16 November 2008
column
A legal practitioner, Festus Keyamo, accused the leadership of the House of Representatives of corruption in the purchase of 307 units of Peugeot 407 cars. Keyamo alleged that the prices of the vehicles were inflated, and that value added tax was paid twice for them.
The total price of the vehicles is two point three billion naira. According to media reports, Peugeot Automobile Nigeria, the company that supplied the cars, has written to the EFCC, apparently to exculpate the House leadership from Keyamo's allegations. I am not interested in whether Keyamo was motivated by patriotic motives or selfish interests in his current face-off with the House of Representatives.
That is a minor issue when compared to the extravagance of our so-called elected representatives. Apart from fixing huge emoluments for themselves, members of the National Assembly seem so preoccupied with cars, houses, estacodes and other pecks of office that one wonders whether these people truly understand the essence of genuine leadership.
The chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Ita Enang, responded in a typical manner to explain away the irrational wastage of public funds. He argued that a bullet proof Mercedes Benz S600 car was purchased at the cost of N52.8 million, and that the House of Representatives should be applauded for its prudence in saving over N25 million!
This is the kind of reasoning that predominates in Nigeria's leadership circles, reasoning bereft of notion of selfless service and self sacrifice.
Enang and his colleagues in the House must be suffering from an illusion of grandeur to believe that Nigerians would just acquiesce to mindless wastage of public funds. To add insult to injury some of the so-called honourable members insist that the transaction is legal since it was provided for in the budget.
This argument is, to say the least, fallacious. Something may be legal and yet immoral. Many of the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime in Germany were legal, but all reasonable people condemned Hitler for his brutality on fellow human beings, not because his actions were illegal but because they are completely against the fundamental principles of morality and civilized conduct. If an immoral act is sanctioned by law, that does not remove the fact that it is immoral. Infact such a law should never have been enacted in the first place .
Therefore supporters of the unreasonable purchase of hundreds of expensive cars by the House of Representatives are simply encouraging the law-makers to make obnoxious polices that would only benefit the selfish unpatriotic interests of few Nigerians in high places.
The issue, really, is not whether the purchase of cars is provided for or not in the budget. What is important is whether it is reasonable and morally right to spend so much on cars for legislators when the economy of the country demands prudence from all Nigerians, especially from politicians.
As far as I am concerned the I-don't-care behaviour of members of the House who support the wastage of scarce resources is utterly reprehensible. At a time when millions of Nigerians cannot afford the essentials of life without hard struggles, members of the political elite are busy misusing public funds to maintain opulent life-styles.
What is the relevance of an expensive bullet proof car to the business of law-making? What has happened to the notion of leadership by example, the idea that the best way to govern is to serve? How has our self-styled servant leader, President Umar Musa Yar'Adua, responded to the latest scandal in the House of Representatives?
Mr. Enang and all the elected office holders pretending to run our crooked democracy are very lucky indeed to be operating in a society where the citizens are docile, cowardly and thoroughly laid back. If Nigeria is a serious country like the United States, thorough investigation of the allegations by Keyamo would have been underway.
At the end of the exercise those found guilty would bear the full weight of the law. The citizens would also ensure that the culprits can never be elected again for public office. In Nigeria, sadly, matters are totally different. Big men and thick madams in government get away with all manner of criminality, because they are sacred cows beyond the reach of the law.
As a Nigerian, I am ashamed that Nigeria is not just static, in terms of development the country is moving backwards after successive administrations since the end of the Biafran war.
For instance, members of the National Assembly and the Presidency, during Shagari's tenure, were not as notorious as the present group in the wastage of public funds on frivolities. The late Sam Mbakwe and Lateef Jakande are well-known for the people-oriented programmes they embarked upon. Do we have the equivalents of these men now? I do not think so.
Notwithstanding his motives, Keyamo must be commended for his efforts in helping Nigerians to come to terms with the kind of people pretending to represent them in the House of Representatives. His activities regarding the misuse of the police equipment fund by those entrusted with the money is also commendable.
The problem with Nigerians, especially those "who have made it" in one aspect of human endeavour or other is that they get so carried away in their comfort zones that they forget or ignore millions of their compatriots who are really suffering. I think it is time for our people to be less selfish and be more interested in what is happening around them.
Those who are comfortable should learn to extend some care to the less privileged ones. Over and over again, those in government have proved to be selfish, corrupt and insulated from the realities of our situation in this country.
I am amazed that our politicians are not challenged to govern well by what is happening in Ghana. Since Jerry Rawlings brought some sanity into governance in Ghana, that country has been making steady progress, to the extent that many foreigners prefer to invest there rather than Nigeria because of the improved level of political stability and infrastructure.
There was a time Ghanaians flocked to Nigeria in search of greener pasture and the golden fleece. Now the reverse is the case. Many Nigerian businessmen and women invest in Ghana, and some people I know have sent their children to universities there because of the sorry state of tertiary education in Nigeria.
With all the myriads of problems facing Nigeria presently, Dimeji Bankole and his colleagues are more concerned with acquiring posh cars and bullet-proof vehicles. My people, the Igbo, have an adage which says: onye ulo ya na agba oku anaghi achu oke, that is, "a person whose house is burning cannot be chasing rats". But that is precisely what is happening today in Nigeria.
While Nigerians sink deeper and deeper into the slough of despond, the political leaders are busy with primitive accumulation; they are busy chasing shadows instead of governing the country properly. At this point, I want to make some comments about what is happening in Lagos right now. I am one of those residents of Lagos who believe that the incumbent governor of the state, Babatunde Raji Fashola, has the potentials to improve the situation of Lagos State.
For those of us who do not know him personally, from a distance he gives the impression of a calm, purposeful and focused politician genuinely interested in fulfilling his campaign promises to the people of Lagos State.
Governor Fashola has done well in the areas of road rehabilitation and environmental sanitation. But I do not agree that the beautification measures he has embarked on is what Lagosians need right now.
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