Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has described the $29.6 billion loan request by President Muhammadu Buhari as an act of irresponsibility, warning that he cannot sit and watch his government “ruin the future of Nigerians.”
Atiku said this in an article on Tuesday, noting that he and former President Olusegun Obasanjo worked to clear Nigeria’s foreign debt after the return of democracy in 1999 and he would not allow any government to “plunge Nigeria into another debt”.
According to him, the problem of Nigeria is not the lack of money but the inability of Nigerians to make the right leadership decisions.
He said, “The fact that Nigeria currently budgets more money for debt servicing (₦2.7 trillion), than we do on capital expenditure (₦2.4 trillion) is already an indicator that we have borrowed more money than we can afford to borrow. And the thing is that debt servicing is not debt repayment. Debt servicing just means that we are paying the barest minimum allowable by our creditors,” the article read.
“And while spending 50% of our current revenue on debt servicing, this administration wants to take further loans of $29.6 billion! To say that this is irresponsible is itself an understatement.
“President Olusegun Obasanjo and I paid off this nation’s debt, and I will not stand idly by and watch while Nigeria is plunged into second slavery by those who only know how to reap where they have not sown.
“In my economic blueprint, I said that rather than turn in regular losses (which it has consistently been doing), the best thing to do with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is to reform it. Of course, the administration’s paid propagandists went into overdrive, accusing me of planning to sell the NNPC to my friends,” he said.
“But just last week, Saudi Arabia’s ARAMCO, the most profitable company in the world, took that route and almost broke the global stock market with the most successful initial IPOs in world history, bar none. Ironically, Saudi Aramco raised $29.4 billion via this IPO. Just the amount this administration wants to borrow.
“That could have been Nigeria’s story, but for our failure of leadership. By reforming the NNPC, Nigeria can raise the $29.6 billion the Buhari regime wants to borrow, and we will raise the money without going into debt.”
He faulted the plan of Buhari’s government to use part of the loan to digitilize the Nigerian Television Authority and other similar projects.
Atiku called on Nigerian youth to identify the Senator representing their senatorial zones and write to them, urging them to vote against this request.
The former vice president added that Ghana and Rwanda are now attracting more foreign direct investment when compared to Nigeria.
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