More outcry over legislators’ N160bn SUVs as NIPR leads talk on government-citizen engagement

More outcry over legislators’ N160bn SUVs as NIPR leads talk on government-citizen engagement

By Prosper Okoye

The president of the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Dr. Ike Neliaku, has said that more advocacy would be done to enlighten public officials about the need to engage citizens for economic development.

At the present rate of progress, many Nigerians are not informed about the rationale behind government economic policies. The Director-General of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman, has warned that this lack of information could further widen public mistrust in the government.

“As we continue to raise the issues, we believe that the government will recognise the need to take citizen engagement and relationships more seriously,” Dr. Neliaku said shortly after the NIPR Abuja chapter conference.

Prof. Sulaiman, the keynote speaker at the conference, told the gathering that the legislators had not yet justified the purchase of 469 luxury vehicles despite the poor state of the nation’s economy.

Lamenting the situation, former NIPR President Mallam Mukhtar Sirajo stated, “You cannot tell us to tighten our belts when you are loosening yours. You tell us that there is no money, yet the budget brought to the National Assembly prioritises the purchase of new vehicles for the President and the first lady, and the National Assembly prioritises the purchase of 160 million Naira worth of vehicles for its members. Yes, the National Assembly may need vehicles, but do they need vehicles worth 160 million Naira at a time when the government says there is no money?”

Although Senator Victor Umeh, representing Anambra Central, did not comment on the controversial purchase of vehicles in his address as chairman of the event, he did connect the criticism following petrol subsidy removal to the inadequate information about the long-run effects of the policy.

“So much is happening in Nigeria today that the population does not understand what is going on, and they end up holding the government in contempt and as enemies,” he said.

“Nigeria is in dire need of reforms; this will come with pain but will yield a turnaround. Even we in the Senate are suffering. As a senator, I carry the responsibility of so many people,” Sen. Umeh added.

Delivering a goodwill message, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Simbi Wabote, stated that the NCDMB owed it to Nigerians to educate them on how to leverage the economic opportunities provided by the government.

“Through strategic communications, the NCDMB has been able to reduce the influence of foreign domination in the oil and gas industry, thereby creating opportunities for Nigerians to get involved,” said Wabote, who was represented by the Board’s Deputy Manager of Corporate Communications, Mr. Obinna Ezeobi.

Mr. Ezeobi informed us that these opportunities can be explored through the organisation’s website and its guiding act.

However, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said citizen engagement was beyond the government. “Citizens should also take it as a civic duty to inform the government about their needs,” the Minister, who was represented by the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, Ali Ali, noted.

The spokesperson for the Senate President, Eseme Eyiboh, noted that the attitude of elected officials preparing to win future elections, rather than engaging the people to meet their development needs, remains a critical roadblock to citizen-government engagements.

“The infrastructure to communicate between the people and the government is not there, especially in this era of social media appreciation. How many people in government have access to social media intelligence? How many of them can play around with TikTok, Facebook, or X? So what these people do most of the time is sit down and write proposals for seminars, and when they go to these seminars, they go shopping,” he lamented.

The NIPR President believes that its future plans, which include initiating the REBIRTH Nigeria project, citizens’ education at various levels, value reorientation, and the promotion of made-in-Nigeria goods and services, are essential to changing this narrative. ‘We cannot get trainers from abroad to teach us when we have very capable Nigerians, but we can have a collaboration.