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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
Bankole's "Motorgate"
In its October 23 edition, Thisday ran a highly readable and insightful article by Honourable 'Dimeji Bankole, the youthful Speaker of the Federal House of Representative, as guest columnist.
The title of the Speaker's article was "Five Lessons from America." The subject was the on-going crisis of global capitalism in general, but American capitalism in particular.
Among the five lessons that the Speaker said we should learn from the debacle of Western political-economy was one about leaders accepting criticisms in good faith. "Lesson three," he said in his article, is that "Dissent is not treason."
Bankole was referring to the harsh criticism the White House initially faced from Republican Congressmen over its rescue package for Wall Street. "Because taxpayers' money has to be spent", he said, "this pushes the issue right in the realm of politics. President George Bush and his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, put a $700 billion bailout together and sent it to the Congress. Interestingly the proposal was vehemently opposed by members of the Republican Party, President Bush's own party… But neither the party leaders nor the executive arm of government demonised the Republicans in Congress. No one called them traitors… Dissent was not presented as treason."
Even as the Speaker was writing about the lessons from the crisis of Capitalism, a drama was unfolding right in his own courtyard which may yet put a question mark on the integrity of his convictions.
I am, of course, talking about the "motorgate" which is threatening to engulf his speakership barely one year after he took over from his predecessor, Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh, herself a victim of a huge contract scam.
Bankole's "motorgate" started in December last year when he approved a memo from the Deputy Chairman House Services Committee, Honourable Aliyu Dikko requesting for the purchase of 380 vehicles, ostensibly for use as official cars of members of the House. Ostensibly, because the Constitution couldn’t have been more definitive about whom, among federal legislators, are entitled to official cars.
Section 84 of the Constitution gives the National Assembly the powers to prescribe the salaries and allowances of the President and "certain other officers," including the federal legislators, subject to the amount determined by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission.
The RMAFC has since determined that among federal legislators only the Senate President, his deputy, the Speaker and his deputy are entitled to official vehicles. The rest are only entitled to motor vehicle loans, repayable in four years. For this, there is a generous motor vehicle maintenance allowance of a little over 1.5 million Naira for Senators and about 1.49 for House members annually.
This meant the Speaker should never have approved the request for the vehicles to begin with. He may have done so under the assumption that vehicles purchased through loans are for the personal use of members. If that was so his assumption was patently fallacious because it is akin to saying the House should still provide its members with accommodation in Abuja even after they would each have collected a generous 4.052 million Naira annual housing allowance.
A more plausible request would have been for provision of vehicles for the House's principal officers – Majority and Minority Leaders, the Whips etc - and for Committee work since the National Assembly works through the committee system. However, even this could not have justified buying 380 vehicles. The House has only a handful of principal officers and no more than 58 committees, which itself are probably more than necessary. Each of these should have no more than two vehicles in a pool.
So, approving the purchase of 380 "official" vehicles was Bankole's mistake No. 1. Mistake No. 2 was that only one company, in this case Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria, was offered a no-bid contract to supply the vehicles. This is the offer that has now opened the House leadership to charges of defrauding Nigerians of hundreds of millions of Naira.
Those making the charges, including Newswatch in its cover story of September 22, and Festus Keyamo, an activist lawyer, say the contract was for the supply of Peugeot 407 ST Sport at N6, 209,175 Naira each. Instead, PAN, they say, supplied 407 Comfort with fewer specifications priced at N5, 100,000.00 Naira each. As a result, Nigerians, they allege, have been cheated out of a total of 421,486,500 Naira.
Newspaper reports say that Bankole has reacted to these charges by dismissing Keyamo as a noise maker. In an editorial on the matter entitled "Dig deeper" in its October 30th edition, The Nation for example, quoted Bankole as saying "Let Keyamo make noise… We are dealing with serious issues."
Such a reaction makes you wonder how much the Speaker believed his own advice about the folly of dismissing criticisms as treason or treachery. Remember his "Lesson Three" on the debacle of Capitalism?
Not only has Bankole dismissed at least one of his accusers with contempt, his supporters in the House have done worse. Several members of the Committee on Ethics and Privileges looking into the issue subjected Keyamo to invectives during their first sitting the other day. One of them, Honourable Warman Ogoriba, was reported by newspapers to have even threatened to kill Keyamo. The Nation of October 30, for example, quoted the appropriately named Warman as shouting, "I will kill him, I am a street boy from Port Harcourt," itself hardly a compliment to the image of the character of youths in the Delta region.
Perhaps, Bankole's unfolding "motorgate", as his supporters says, is the handiwork of his enemies of who he is certainly not in short supply, considering the many feathers his recent reshuffle of House Committees must have ruffled. This is not to mention the well-known mutual animosity between him and former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and between him and the governor of his native Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel.
If indeed "motorgate" is the antics of his enemies who are trying to make a mountain out of a mole-hill, the Speaker must blame himself for creating the mole-hill to begin with – that is, if the PAN deal can be described as a small infraction. As I said he should never have approved the purchase of the 380 cars in the first place. However, having approved it, he should have insisted on competitive bidding. Obviously this would have mitigated his first mistake.
PAN's no-bid contract has, as I have said, opened the House leadership to charges of corruption for the simple reason that few of the vehicles supplied by the company had all the requested specifications. This is not in itself fraudulent, except that there are no records of any refunds for the vehicles that were short on those specifications.
If, like several of Bankole's supporters, you think this is all fairy tales, consider a somewhat similar controversy that embroiled PAN a little over twenty five years ago.
On June 5, 1983, the Sunday New Nigerian led the day's edition with a story about the company fitting its new brand of 505 with a 504 engine. "If you are planning to buy a Peugeot 505 car," ran the introduction to the story, "then this is news for you. The 'new' Peugeot 505 GL, introduced by Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria (PAN) late April this year, is being fitted with a 504 engine."
This story led to a hot exchange of words on the pages of newspapers between myself as the deputy editor of the New Nigerian who suggested its publication to the editors of the Sunday newspaper based on an analysis of the car by its motoring columnist, and Alhaji Isa Ozi Salami, a board member of New Nigerian and the public relations manager of PAN.
Eventually I paid a small price for this and for my many other editorial sins by being redeployed to the commercial department of the New Nigerian. The Sunday New Nigerian's motoring column was also stopped. However, PAN could simply not convincingly deny the story.
Of course, the ownership and management of the company has since changed but in the world of so-called free market forces, greed, even more than other habits, die hard.
And as if all this was not enough trouble for the Speaker, the Chairman of the House Committee on Ethics and Business, Honourable Ita Enang, told a press conference in Abuja over the weekend that the House has placed orders for a number of bullet proof vehicles for the Speaker and his deputy at the princely sum of 52.8 million Naira a piece. The vehicles, he said, would have cost the taxpayer between 82 and 105 million Naira each if the House leadership was not so minded to be frugal in spending public revenue for its safety and comfort! "The House," said Honourable Enang, "should rather be applauded for saving over N25 million on the transactions. The same goes for other transactions that were transparently done."
The mind truly boggles at such extravagant spending of public revenue for the creature comfort of those who say they are our servants. It also makes you wonder if Speaker Bankole who talked so much about the lessons of the crisis of the political-economy of faraway America had himself learnt any lessons from the crisis of the politics of greed that engulfed his predecessor. |