$29.96B Foreign Loan: What Happened To Recovered Loots?” PDP Asks Buhari

The party said this in a statement issued by Prince Dayo Adeyeye, on behalf of the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led faction of the party.

Buhari had on Tuesday asked the National Assembly to approve the external borrowing plan to enable his government to raise funds to execute key infrastructure projects across the country between now and 2018.

But Adeyeye emphasized that the President must itemise what he intended to finance with the proposed borrowing of almost $30bn instead of lumping everything up in a coded term “and to plunge the nation’s future into a burden of debt”.

He said that the President’s approach could not be the preferred solution to the economic quagmire, which he alleged was created by the present government.

Adeyeye, a former Minister of State for Works, said, “This government budgeted N6.07tn for the 2016 fiscal year with a deficit of N2.22tn, and according to the breakdown, N1.8tn was budgeted for capital expenditure and President Buhari is now seeking to borrow over N9tn ($29.96bn) for ‘critical infrastructure’.

“This is absurd and way outside the government’s budgetary provisions for capital expenditure and must be rejected by all well-meaning Nigerians.

“Nigerians will recall that the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in June made public through a press statement an account of recovered looted funds between May 2015 and May 2016 amounting to N78.3bn, $185.1m, £3.5m and €11,250m in cash, while others were under interim forfeiture. What happened to the recovered funds?”

Adeyeye added that the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, recently said that the commission had recovered more money in the last eight months than it did in 12 years.

He said that Nigerians needed to know how much revenue the government had been able to generate from crude oil, non-oil and independent revenue sources since assumption.

The PDP leader said that the clarification would boost the confidence of Nigerians on the management of their resources, especially in this period of recession, and was necessary before thinking of engaging in external borrowing.

“The APC-led Federal Government is again taking Nigeria prior to year 2005 when the external debt burden derailed the growth of Nigeria’s economy and weakened the GDP before the total cancellation of her debt,” he added.
Adeyeye also said that the proposed action of the Federal Government would be a great injustice to the citizens now and in the future if they were plunged back into debt.

He said, “Let us state unequivocally that history will not forgive this APC government and its collaborators if they allow this injustice and maladministration of our economy and citizens to stand.

“We, therefore, call on the two chambers of the National Assembly to reject this anti-people request by an anti-people government that has no genuine interest for the growth and development of the people of this country.

“We again call on all Nigerians to speak with one voice and stop President Buhari from further destroying of our great nation, Nigeria, and by extension, Africa.”