By Adeola Soetan
As the name suggests, official cars are strictly used and meant for official purposes.
Before it was generally abused and taken as a norm, official cars were always parked at the company / ministry’s car pool after office hours and records taken. In actual fact, in those good old days, officials, no matter how senior, were not allowed to drive their allocated cars, only drivers were allowed to do that because drivers were directly responsible to account for the cars.
I still met this culture of strict official discipline when I started working in 1980.
Pick and Drop
Government ministries, departments and agencies observed this rule of non abuse of official cars like the 10 Commandments. No matter your position, official cars were not allowed to be used outside office hours except on official duty, were not used by relatives of officers and not used for non official duty.
Before now, official cars only picked and dropped officers in their homes and offices. No official car was allowed to ‘sleep’ in any officer’s home including driver’s house.
No matter how late, a driver would still prefer to come and park the car in the office and sleep there than to allow the car ‘sleeps’ in his house because he and the official that used the car would be queried.
PSs, GMs, MDs, Directors and other most senior officials entitled to official cars dared not abuse the privilege. They used to officially apply / inform to use their cars for non official duties like parties, traveling, picking of children in schools, usage by family members among others. The adherence to this rule / protocol was to reduce cost, risk, preserve the cars and instill discipline.
Hardly you would see official cars parked anywhere or anyhow on the road outside office hours. Smart officers parked at corner sides or some would cover the number plates or use ‘security’ number plates to avoid identification.
If anything happens to official car, may be it’s stolen, got burnt or damaged, the first questions always asked are: ‘Was the car on official duty?’ was the entitled officer there? Who drove the car at the time of the incident? Insurance policy didn’t cover official cars used outside official hours, and on non official duty at the time of bad incident.
I still remember vividly that part of the’ War Against Indiscipline’ WAI ethnics of General Buhari military dictatorship in 1984 – 85 was strict observance of official usage of official cars even by senior military officers. It was as strict as that.
I have seen Prof. Makanjuola Rogers as VC of OAU, Ife twice not using his official car outside office hours. I saw him ride his jeep on my way to lodge at the university guest house and I was surprised and impressed about that practice. When I discussed it with the guest house guys they told me that that was Roger’s style. Good one.
For the mere fact that almost all of us including me misuse or have abused the privilege of our official cars does not make it right. It is wrong and should be discouraged.
Perhaps, Buhari’ s daughter using the president’s official jet would not have generated much uproar if Buhari had not come into office with over advertised integrity and with a promise to change from our rotten status quo. To defend such abuse of official privilege by his daughter for her personal business runs is very very stupid.
