The sermon of sacrifice as offered to Nigerians by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appears to have lost its potency among the members of the 10 National Assembly members whose action and inaction has made the sermon sound like a broken record
Since May 29, 2023 when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in as the president of the country, sacrifice had been demanded from the electorate towards reposition the nation that has been battered by the obnoxious economic policies bequeathed the country by the infamous administration of former President Mohammadu Buhari for the past eight years. In his inaugural speech, Tinubu punitively removed fuel subsidy, telling Nigerians to tighten their belt so as to rebuild the nation because all hands must be on deck to move the nation to its rightful position in the comity of prosperous nations.
At every fora Tinubu had opportunity to talk to the electorate, he asked them to sacrifice and be patient with his government that is battling with legitimacy, insisting that he is working hard to make the country a better place to live. But snippets from the activities of Tinubu has shown that he is not ready to sacrifice anything in the building of a nation that is virile economically and otherwise, reaffirming the believe in some quarters that the administration is paying lip service to the mantra of offering sacrifice as demanded from the populace by it.
For instance, when President Tinubu visited Lagos State for the Sallah holidays recently, he was said to have ridden in convoy of about 102 vehicles, mathematical analysts told this medium that the cost implication of fueling 102 vehicles of different tank sizes is too expensive to bear for a government that has been crying to the high heaven that the citizens should imbibe the culture of sacrifice as the only pathway to building a nation of their dream. The ostentatious display of profligacy by the administration in number of vehicle that accompanied President Tinubu is a pointer that his sermon of sacrifice has the trappings of Yahoo yahoo sermon in cunning their victims in the course of their illicit trade. Besides the number of convoys that follow him anywhere in the country, the money he had expended travelling within one month in the office and retinue of officials that follow in those trips are enough to conclude that Judas is a Nigerian. It was also gathered that the money he has allegedly spent on maintaining fleets of presidential planes since he took over as the President and the Commander –in-Chief of the Armed Forces, is humongous, and is not expected of an administration that started with the mantra of sacrifice.
Investigation at the disposal of this medium revealed that the National Assembly has also started to display its own dose of profligacy in the large scale by the amount of money they are going to expend maintaining the retinue of aides unleashed on the National Assembly. It was gathered that about 3,000 aides has been procured for the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and Speaker of the House of Representatives and other principal officers of the National Assembly.
Tentacle’s checks revealed that the size of the NASS members including aides is one of the institutions that consume large portion of the yearly budget. The Senate is made up of 109 members while the House of Representatives has 369 members. Nigerians are constantly shocked that the 469 members of the NASS are entitled to 5 aides aside from the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives that have to themselves 45 aides and 30 aides respectively.
It is on record that members of the National Assembly were elected by the people to represent them for the protection of their various interest in the project called Nigeria but the information oozing out from both chambers of the NASS does not suggest that the elected members are there to protect the interest of the electorate as it supposed to be. The exotic lifestyle of members of NASS has not in any way shown that they are tightening their belt as preached by President Tinubu. The amount of tax payers money that is being squandered on the altar of the exotic lifestyle of the members of the National Assembly has made many Nigerians to believe that the mantra of sacrifice being preached at the electorate by the administration of Tinubu is a fluke because the preachers are not doing what they expect the masses to do in the preparation of building a strong nation economically, a nation that its citizens would be pulled out of poverty in a jiffy.
