Senator Sunday Karimi (APC, Kogi) has said that the purchase of 360 sports utility vehicles (SUVs) for senators of the 10th National Assembly under the leadership of Senator Godswill Akpabio is a necessity, not luxury.
Karimi, who is also chairman of the Committee on Senate Services, told journalists on Tuesday in Abuja that Nigerians should also raise questions about ministers who have four official vehicles.
“Somebody that is a minister has more than three land cruisers, prado and other vehicles and you are not asking them questions, why us?” He asked.
“These vehicles that you see, go to Nigeria road. Today, if I go home once, my senatorial district, I come back spending a lot on my vehicles because our roads are bad. Am I talking to somebody?
“I said the decision that we took on using land cruiser is the cost and durability.
“Before they came up with this. It is not the decisions of the senators alone, we did an analysis before arriving at land cruisers,” he added.
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Karimi said the senators chose SUVs based on comparative analysis of cost of technical issues and durability.
“We want something that we can maintain for another four years and the issue of buying vehicles for national assembly, you know it is a reccurring issue, it occurs every assembly, it will always come up.
“If you go 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 National Assembly?” He asked again.
Karimi said that part of the money paid to the contractor was for settlement of about N16 billion liabilities.
