The House of Representatives has announced plans to purchase 360 cars for its members, New Telegraph reports.
This was made known yesterday, Thursday 14, by the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Hon. Abdulrazaq Namdas (APC, Adamawa).
Namdas, who declined to disclose the amount to be spent on the cars, said: “The lower chamber would buy 360 cars for members to use for various committees’ activities as every lawmaker belongs to several committees.”
He explained that individual lawmaker belong to several committees hence it would be impossible for them to move around all the committees at the same time during oversight functions if there are only 96 cars.
“If you just buy one vehicle for a committee, how are they going to do? We cannot use one vehicle to cater for all the members’ committee activities.
“Every member of the National Assembly belongs to not less than seven committees. So, the mere fact that we have 96 committees does not mean 96 vehicles will be purchased,” he said.
Meanwhile, the red chamber is also planning to buy cars worth N4.7 billion for its members as well. When the decision raised eyebrow among Nigerians, the Senate on December 31, 2015 described as untrue the claim that it planned to purchase cars that will be worth N4.7bn as claimed by President Muhammadu Buhari in his maiden media chat.
Just recently, the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, in his attempt to defend the purchase of the cars said the huge cost of procuring vehicles for the lawmakers is as a result of the prevailing exchange rate for the United States’ dollar.
