Today, Nigerians were miffed at the new request President Buhari has made to the senate to request for the approval of fresh external borrowings totalling $5.513bn.
In the letter read by Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, during thursday plenary, President Buhari had announced to the house members that he needed the funds for 2020 budget deficit, financing of critical projects, and for some states of the federation.
Recall the National Assembly had recently, approved a loan of N850bn for the Federal Government, while another amount of $22.79bn, which has already been approved by the Senate, is pending before the House.
March this year, the Senate had raised an alarm that if President Muhammadu Buhari got approval for the $22.7 billion foreign loan request requested at that time, Nigeria’s total debt profile would stand at a staggering N33 trillion.
The Deputy Chairman of Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, Senator Muhammad Enagi, had pointed this out while delivering a public lecture organized by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies ( NILDS).
Unfortunately, the realities met on ground including the required infrastructure and the calculation of other debt which has been accumulated between 2006 till date unfortunately, did not show any correlation, he observed.
While querying the huge loans collected but having nothing to show for it, the assembly man asked: “What do we have to show as a people for these huge debts accumulated over the last four decades or so?”
Just last month, April 2020, the Nigerian Senate had also approved a fresh N850bn loan at the request of President Muhammadu Buhari to fund some projects in the 2020 budget
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