PDP Condemns FG’s $5.5bn Loan Request …Says Buhari Mortgaging Children’s Future …As Senate Considers Request

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised the external loan request of President Muhammadu Buhari as an attempt by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government to mortgage the lives of unborn Nigerian children for many years to come, even as the Senate yesterday began consideration of the President’s request.
In a statement signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Prince Dayo Adeyeye yesterday, the PDP said “it received with shock, the plan by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government to plunge Nigeria into further debt, and consciously mortgage the Future of our unborn generations through needless and mindless borrowing of the sum of $5.5billion.
“Like other well-meaning Nigerians, we consider this new bid for a foreign loan of $5.5billion being sought by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari as an attempt to push the nation down into the black hole of debt that will affect negatively, the future of this nation,” the party lamented.
It stated that, “As a party that governed this nation meritoriously for 16 years and handed over a buoyant economy to the APC in 2015, we are concerned that by the time Nigerians would have the opportunity to push out the APC government in 2019, the economy of the nation would have been damaged irreparably.
“For emphasis, we are dismayed at the rate by which the APC is plunging the nation into debt through local and foreign borrowing without concomitant developmental projects in any sphere of the nation’s economy to justify the huge borrowing,” Adeyeye noted.
“The figure released recently by the Debt Management Office (DMO) stating that the nation under the administration of the APC government in the last two years of being in office, has borrowed N7.51trillion is mind-boggling.
“Mind-boggling because all-round infrastructural decay has now reached alarming proportions. The roads have deteriorated, the state of power supply has become worse, and there is no increase in wages to match the skyrocketing inflation. As a result, workers in educational institutions and other government agencies have spent more time at home observing strike action than they spent at work; insecurity has sky-rocketed beyond what anyone can imagine, while those in power continue to delude themselves that they are providing plausible leadership for the country,” the party said.
“We are constrained to ask the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to explain to Nigerians what his government has done with the several huge sums borrowed in the last two years in the name of financing infrastructural development in the country.
“The data shows that since President Buhari was sworn-in, the nation’s debt has risen by 61.96 per cent in only two years.
“As major stakeholders in the Nigerian Project, we are worried that if the National Assembly does not stop this latest demand for foreign loan, the money when released, will go the way of other loans obtained in the last two years without any tangible result to show for it,” the PDP said.
Meanwhile, the Senate has begun consideration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s request for the approval of an external loan of $5.5billion to enable the Federal Government finance the 2017 budget as well as re-finance domestic debts.
The move by the Senate to commence consideration of the external loan request followed Executive Communication by the Senate Leader, Senator Ahmad Lawan, yesterday, who said that the “Senate do consider the Request of Mr.. President C-in-C for the Approval of External Loans for: 1. Issuance of $2.5billion to finance the 2017 Appropriation Act; and ii. $3billion to re- finance debts.”
After the communication, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided over yesterday’s plenary session, referred the request to the Senator Shehu Sani, APC, Kaduna Central-led Senate Committee Foreign and Local Debts, and report back in two weeks.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari had, last Tuesday, written to the Senate, asking for the approval of an external loan of $5.5billion to enable the Federal Government finance the 2017 budget.
Buhari’s request for external borrowing to the tune of $5.5billion was contained in a letter to the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki which was read on the floor of the Senate.
The four-page letter, which was addressed to Senate president, was entitled, “Request for the approval of External Loans for: 1. Implementation of the External Borrowing Approved in the 2017 Appropriation Act: 11 External Borrowing to Re-finance maturing domestic debts through the issuance of $3.00billion Eurobond in the International Capital Market or through a loan syndication.”
According to the letter, while $3billion would be sourced through Eurobond, the remaining $2.5 would come from other sources in the international capital market.
Buhari had, however, allayed fears of Nigerians on possible effect or problems that may come up; saying that the proposed external borrowing of $3.0billion re-finance maturing domestic debt would not lead to an increase in the public debt portfolio against the backdrop that the debt exists, already in the form of high interest short term domestic debt.
According to him, the substitution of domestic debt with relatively cheaper and long-term external debt will lead to a significant decrease in debt service cost, just as he said that government’s moves in re-financing of domestic debt through external debt would also achieve more stability in the debt stock, adding that it would create more borrowing space in the domestic market for the private sector.
Also recall that the Senate had, last week, stepped down the recommendation of its committee to consider the issue of external borrowing for the executive on grounds that it was yet to receive any formal request in that regards.