Why Buhari Must Borrow $29.9bn – APC Chairman, Oyegun
John Odigie-Oyegun, APC National Chairman[/caption]
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, on Sunday, said that it is inevitable for the President Muhamadu Buhari-led administration to borrow if the country must get out of the ongoing economic downturn.
Oyegu said this while receiving a lifetime achievement award during a classical music concert organised by Warri Choral Society at the Muson Center in Lagos.
“If you read the newspapers, you hear the president being advised to pump money into the economy. So the question is where is the money coming from? Simple! It has to come from somewhere including borrowing — both internal and external. To get this country going again, you have to pay contractors. Some contractors have not been paid for four, five, six, 10 years,” Oyedun said.
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“So long as the borrowing is done not to pay salaries which the President Buhari administration will not do, but invested to create opportunities, solve our problems of power and things like that.
“To allow people to have money to consume, to buy goods, to pay for services so that factories can produce. So it is that cycle. We must kick-start the economy and to kick-start it will need money, lots of money,” the APC National Chairman told journalists after the concert,” he said.
It would be recalled that President Buhari had written to the Nigerian Senante, seeking its approval to borrow $29.9 billion from the World Bank.
The loan request seeks to address the infrastructure deficit in the health, education, water resources and other sectors.
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The request has since suffered several setbacks in the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
