The main opposition of political party in Nigeria, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP has condemned the plan by President Muhammadu Buhari to take a new external loan of $5.5 billion plunging Nigeria into further debt which could take up to 50 years to repay.
In an e-mailed statement to The Trent on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, by Dayo Adeyeye, the national publicity secretary of the PDP, the party said it “received with shock” the news that Buhari is “consciously mortgaging the future of our unborn generations”.
Below is the full statement.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) receive with shock, the Plan by the Government of the All Progressives Congress (APC), to plunge Nigeria into further debt, and consciously mortgage the Future of our unborn generations through needless and mindless borrowing of the Sum of $5.5 Billion USD.
2. Like other well meaning Nigerians, we consider this new bid for a foreign loan of $5.5 billion being sought by the Administration of President Buhari as an attempt to push the Nation down into the black hole of debt that will affect negatively, the Future of this Nation.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 N7.51 trillion. It is mind-boggling.
6. 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-rocketted beyond what anyone can imagine, while those in power continue to delude themselves that they are providing plausible leadership for the Country.
7. 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.
8. The data shows that since President Buhari was sworn-in, the Nation’s Debt has risen by 61.96% in only two years.
9. 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.
Signed:
Prince Dayo Adeyeye
National Publicity Secretary
