N160 SUVs: Stop Picking On Lawmakers, Ministers Got 4 Vehicles – Senate

The Senate on Tuesday, justified the purchase of 360 Sports Utility Vehicles for its members, saying Nigerians were picking on lawmakers but ignoring ministers who got about four official vehicles.

The Senate also said its members preferred the imported SUVs to locally manufactured ones.

The Chairman of the Committee on Senate Services, Sunday Karimi, disclosed this at a press conference, saying Nigeria roads are bad, hence their decision to go for a Land Cruiser Jeep.

Karimi said, “Somebody that is a minister has more than three Land Cruisers, Prado and other vehicles and you are not asking them questions, why us?

“These vehicles that you see, go to Nigeria roads today, If I go home once, my senatorial district, I come back spending a lot on my vehicles because our roads are bad.

“I said the decision that we took on using Land Cruiser is the cost and durability.”

He explained further, “Before they came up with this. It is not the decisions of the senators alone, we analysed arriving at Land Cruisers.

“It was based on a comparative analysis of the cost of technical issues and durability on Nigerian roads.

”We want something that we can maintain for another four years and the issue of buying vehicles from the National Assembly, you know it is a recurring issue, it occurs every assembly, it will always come up. “

The lawmaker explained further that members of the state assembly had access to official vehicles.

Karimi added, “If you got to state Houses of Assembly today, check out, most of them before they were even inaugurated, the governor would have bought vehicles waiting for them even local government chairmen.

“I drove the vehicle my local government chairman uses, so why the National Assembly?”