The delivery of Sports Utility Vehicles to members of the National Assembly in Nigeria may have sparked outrageous comments from various quarters, but the Special Adviser to the President of the Senate, Hon. Eseme Eyiboh, has laid the whole issue to rest, unveiling the truth about it.
Eyiboh, a former member of the House of Representatives, spoke in a live interview on TVC News on Monday.
Eyiboh dissected the facts surrounding the matter, saying none of the 109 senators or the 360 members of the House of Representatives was involved in the procurement of the vehicles.
He recalled that since 2003, the National Assembly has been running an annual budget of N150 billion.
Noting that people always viewed the National Assembly budget as only concerning the 469 federal legislators, the former spokesman of the House of Representatives explained that there were the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies, National Institute of Research, National Assembly Service Commission and other administrative staffers.
He said: No Senator or Member of the House of Representatives has ever been given money to buy vehicles and indeed they have never bought vehicles.
“These institutes handle bureaucratic services of the National Assembly.
:Whenever there’s need, they do requisition and follow their procurement standards.”
Stressing that the vehicles were the properties of the National Assembly meant to aid the performance of the legislators’ oversight functions, Eyiboh maintained that it was the bureaucratic arm that does valuation of the vehicles at the expiration of tenures of lawmakers.
He said: “Obviously, they are always given the right of first refusal.
“In the event that a lawmaker doesn’t have the money to pay at the valued rate, the vehicle is being sold out.
“So this shows that it doesn’t belong to the lawmakers.”
Calling on Nigerians to allow the federal legislators work unimpeded, Eyiboh encouraged individuals to carry out an audit instead of using generic approaches to describe what wasn’t true.
He said: “We should be able to encourage the federal lawmakers, just as we encourage the state lawmakers and the members of the Federal Executive Council.
“If anyone feels that there is an infringement or sharp practices in the way the procurement of the vehicles were carried out, then they should take proper steps towards uncovering it.
“One must understand that the vehicle issue has never been directly connected to the lawmakers.
“The lawmakers have never participated in the requisition or the tender or the qualification or payment.
“No lawmaker participates in each of these processes as it is purely administrative issues within the bureaucratic arms of the legislature.”
Asked why the lawmakers do not go for locally made vehicles to boost Nigeria’s economy, Eyiboh said: “I’m sure you are aware of the Extant Procurement Act.
“Truth is, in every competitive bidding, there’s no waiver.
“Such biddings have a technical evaluation and a financial evaluation, which collectively take so many things into consideration.
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“I have said here that one thing about the National Assembly is that they have not been able to inform as much as they perform, but you can’t blame them because as a bureaucratic mix, there is this civil service mentality that you can only be seen, but not heard.”
Hon Eyiboh pointed out that the National Assembly budget included the salaries and wages of the civil servants such as the Permanent Secretaries, Director General, professors and lecturers of the Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies and other staffers of the National Assembly Service Commission.
Eyiboh, who said there was hope for a scaling performance of the 10th Senate, added that the Senator Godswill Akpabio-led Senate would deploy an enterprise development initiative to deliver “Renewed Hope” to Nigerians.
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