Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar, has asked the President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government to apply caution in the way the government is amassing loans.
Atiku’s cautionary call comes after President Tinubu’s request for the National Assembly’s approval of a new external borrowing of $2.209 billion (N1.767 trillion).
Tinubu, in a letter to the Senate and the House of Representatives on Tuesday, said the new external borrowing was as provided for in the 2024 Appropriation Act, adding it was part of Nigeria’s budgetary financing plan aimed at addressing a portion of the N9.17 trillion fiscal deficit in the 2024 budget.
But Atiku, in a press statement he signed on Thursday, said Tinubu’s loans were bone-crushing to Nigerians and bringing insufferable pressure on the economy.
Referencing a recent World Bank report showing Nigeria as the third most indebted country to the International Development Association (IDA), Atiku said, “This report is coming just when the government has already sent a proposal to the National Assembly signalling an intention to borrow an additional N1.7tn being shortfall in the 2024 budget through Euro Bonds.”
Atiku said the current loan proposal was even more concerning because it is benchmarked at the exchange rate of 1 USD to N800, whereas the current exchange rate from the Central Bank of Nigeria stands at over N1,600 to 1 USD.
“Nigeria is sinking further in debt, and the National Assembly has become an accomplice once more. Tinubu had, in July this year, boasted that the FIRS and Customs under his watch have collected all-time high revenues to finance the Budget. Why then are they still borrowing? There is something that they are not telling Nigerians, even as they are being crushed by a combination of their failed trial-and-error policies and loan rackets,” Atiku said.
“These Tinubu’s loans are bone-crushing to Nigerians and bringing insufferable pressure on the economy, especially when they are not properly negotiated and utilized.
“It is concerning that the voracious appetite for these humongous loans is powered by corruption and not for infrastructure and development needs. A report by Budgit, a budget watchdog, has disclosed that the 2024 Budget is a mess because of the level of pork associated with it.
“I feel a sense of personal agony seeing that just a few years after the administration of President Obasanjo took our country out of foreign indebtedness, we are today back at the top spot in the same conundrum.
“It is time that we apply more caution and apply arithmetic to the loan frenzy,” he said.
