Group Asks N/Assembly to reject Buhari’s loan request
The National Assembly and Nigerians have been called upon to rise up and boldly reject President Muhammadu Buhari’s move to borrow $30 billion (N9.12 trillion) from international financial institutions.
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law in a statement titled ‘Before Nigeria is returned to highly indebted countries status’, said that President Buhari should be compelled to swallow his pride and change his style of leadership as well as apologize to Nigerians for his disastrous leadership style.
In the statement signed by its Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Nze Emeka Umeagbalasi, the human right organization, warned that unless President Buhari and his aides turn a new leaf and wear the garment of statesmanship and equally be a good listener, “he will continue to perpetually rigmarole in absurdities even if they borrow the whopping amount”.
The group said that “Nigerian leaders are notoriously known as serial and crooked borrowers, using public building of infrastructures as reasons to obtain such loans and cover up their fraudulent diversions which they channel into overhead and personnel costs squander mania otherwise called “recurrent expenditure”.
They argued that government borrowing all over the world was in steady decline because of the roles of information technology and private sector –driven businesses, saying that Nigeria ought not and should not borrow because it is a land flowing with milk and honey.
Intersociety argued that for any government in Nigeria to go a borrowing, showed was a clear indication of “governance ineptitude, incompetence, failure, confusion, misdirection and parasitism.”
The group said “With the latest move by the administration of Gen Buhari to secure loans amounting to N9,12 trillion for the period 2017-18, the administration has surpassed all the successive military and civilian governments in Nigeria as the highest debtor government since 1960. It is also projected that by the time Gen. Buhari leaves office in 2019, it must have borrowed a total of at least 45 -50 billion dollars in four years and doubled Federal Government share of Nigeria’s public debt, which currently stands at 45 billion dollars or 12.7 trillion naira, comprising local debt of 37.4 billion dollars and foreign debt of 7.6 billion dollars”.
Declaring their opposition to the plan of the President Buhari to borrow, Intersociety asked Nigerians to rise up and demand for accountability from both the present and past federal and state governments in the country, which have squandered about N 134 trillion public fund.
