By Sunny Awhefeada
The Nigerian’s taste for luxury and anything foreign has become a plague. This fad is not restricted to the affluent. Everywhere you turn, there is the tendency for people to fight, and even die, for that which is foreign or a luxury. The Nigerian mindset is not attuned to altruistic sacrifice. It is all about “bring it and let us share it”.
Stones are often thrown at those at the helm of affairs, but the truth, albeit bitter, is that many of those throwing stones are also waiting to join the table and say “bring it and let us share it”. So, the vicious cycle of sharing, depletion of our collective patrimony and mass poverty goes on unabated. However, this is not to say that there are no Nigerians who have been self-sacrificing and have refused to say “bring it and let us share it’ even when they had the opportunity of being at the table. There are such Nigerians, but they are few. Nigeria is not a poor nation by any stretch of the imagination.
We were plunged into poverty by rapacity and larceny. And to make matters worse, we do not sanction malfeasance. So, brazen theft becomes an act of bravado that is celebrated and rewarded. That is why an erstwhile accountant-general of the federation who is standing trial for alleged heisting of N109 billion was recently garlanded with a title. The message from that unpalatable act is that steal as much as you can and get honoured. Stealing continues and our ordeal deepens.
The title of the present intervention apes Nkem Nwankwo’s 1975 satirical novel My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours. It is deliberately chosen to parallel the insensitive desire of members of Nigeria’s National Assembly to buy, for themselves, landcruiser and prado sports utility vans (SUVs), the luxury and expensive vehicle we commonly call jeep. Nobody has ever grudged government officials because of the kind of vehicles they drive. We are aware that some of them even own private jets and those who don’t have also hire. We don’t grudge them. However, what makes the present itch for landcruisers provocative is the unbearably harsh economic condition into which the political class has plunged the nation. As we struggle to barely eat a meal a day, the ruling class is adept at telling us to make sacrifice and be patient for things to work out. The sad irony is that only the deprived people are exhorted to be patient and sacrifice. The rich and the ruling class do not sacrifice. They are also not patient. They eat and eat and eat and they eat now and now! The National Assembly is made up of four hundred and sixty nine members, senators and representatives. The senators who are one hundred and nine in number are asking for one hundred and nine landcruisers. While the three hundred and sixty representatives are asking for a prado each! And a landcruiser costs one hundred and sixty million naira!
A good measure of outrage has greeted this insensitivity. The Social Economic Rights Action Project (SERAP) has dragged the lawmakers to court. Other civil society organizations and labour unions should do the same. The citizenry must be ready to intervene each time things are going wrong. And this is one of such times. A people enmeshed in untold economic suffering should not sit idle, whistle and watch those they “elected” to “serve” them live in provocative opulence. The lawmakers have come out to defend this indefensible intention in the face of the public outcry. One ill-equipped and annoying Sinator Sunday Karimi spoke for them on Channels television’s “Politics Today” anchored by Seun Okinbaloye. Sinator Karimi goofed all through as he could neither give any convincing nor acceptable answer to the barrage of questions from the anchor. All he could say was that the lawmakers needed the vehicles to drive on our bad roads.
The same lawmakers who want a one hundred and sixty million naira landcruiser for each member declined a motion requesting that government should pay the enrolment fees of candidates taking the West African School Certificate Examination and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination. This motion was coming in realization of the present crushing economic condition. Nigeria’s minimum wage is a tragic thirty thousand naira which is not enough to enroll a child for any public examination in the country. Yet, the family is expected to pay rent, feed and clothe. Nigerians are suffering and dying. The situation has gone worse than multi-dimensional poverty. Yet, our lawmakers want to drive expensive landcruisers. Sinator Karimi pointed accusing fingers at ministers and other public servants who also ride in landcruisers as a justification for the lawmakers’ insistence on purchasing theirs. Okinbaloye asked him why they didn’t go for vehicles made by Innoson, the Nigerian vehicle manufacturer, and our man muttered some inane answer.
The Nigerian penchant for luxury and foreign goods has become an economic pandemic that has drained the country anemically. In the 1950s, Adegoke Adelabu, the late controversial Ibadan politician bought a luxury American car while in parliament. His opponents criticized him and he drove the car to Dugbe market, opened its doors and asked the people to get into it saying that it was their car. When General Yakubu Gowon was overthrown in July 1975, his wife, Victoria was away in London shopping for the family. Lagos, Kaduna, Ibadan, Enugu and Port-Harcourt were too local to cater for the needs of the first family. In the Second Republic, President Shehu Shagari was enamoured of the model of Mercedes Benz called Concord and it was named Shagari. Adisa Akinloye the chairman of Shagari’s political party made hedonism a political craft and drank champagne specially brewed for him from Europe with his name branded on the bottle. Today, what goes into foreign education and medical tourism is more than humungous in fiscal terms.
Once upon a time, civil servants, doctors and lecturers drove simple and inexpensive cars. And many of us in our university days admired many of our lecturers for the simple cars they drove as they pontificated and professed the Marxist creed. Then, around the year 2000, the salary of university lecturers was increased and that ushered in the experience of what we called “gbemu” at the University of Ibadan. Our lecturers then started buying V-Boot Mercedes Benz and a few bought jeeps. It soon became a vogue on campuses. I remember telling a professor at a time that I was going to do an essay titled “Jeepy Professors” and the Prof screamed, “Sunny, don’t do that ooo”. I told him that Dan Agbese once satirized fellow journalists as “Benzy journalists”. The Prof bought me two bottles of beer and a plate of pepper soup and we reached an MOU. But, lecturers cannot be blamed if they bought such cars then as they did so with loans that must be repaid. But this is not the case with the lawmakers.
The ongoing desire for the lawmakers to buy those expensive cars must be stopped. This is not the time for such insensitive luxury. Our people cannot eat, children are dropping out of school, rents are piling up and everything is just bleak. Even now, word is out that over seven billion naira will be spent on renovating the presidential residence and another one billion and five hundred million naira will be used to buy cars for the president’s wife. Are these things real? Are those taking these decisions living in the same Nigeria like the rest of us? Everybody must make sacrifice at this time by giving up something, the rich and the rulers inclusive. The purchase must stop so that no Senator will sneer at a Representative and say, “my landcruiser is bigger than yours”!
