The Nigerian Senate has blamed
the country’s debt profile on past presidents.
Chairman of the Senate Committee
on Finance, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, blamed ex-President Olusegun
Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan for Nigeria’s high death
profile.
Adeola said the high debt
profiles accumulated between 1999 and 2015.
The lawmaker disclosed this on
Wednesday during consideration of the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure
Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
In a statement forwarded by
spokesman of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, Ezrel Tabiowo, the lawmaker
said Adeola disclosed this when asked by Lawan to make clarifications on
concerns raised by lawmakers over Nigeria’s debt profile during deliberation on
the report of the Joint Committees on Finance; Local and Foreign Debts;
Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions; Petroleum Resources
(Upstream); Downstream Petroleum Sector and Gas on the 2022-2024 Medium Term
Framework.
According to the lawmaker a “huge
part of Nigeria’s total debt profile roughly estimated at N33trillion naira
were incurred by past administrations dating back to the military era.”
He added: “Majority of the loans
being repaid presently by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration were
ones accumulated from the times of the military to those of the PDP
administration under Ex-Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and
Goodluck Jonathan, between 1999 and 2015.
“The borrowing you are saying is
accumulated borrowing. It is not a borrowing of this administration alone, it
is a borrowing that stems from the days of the military to the days when the
Democratic dispensation started.
“It is an accumulated loan, it is
not a loan that says that it is the current administration of President Buhari
that has borrowed.
“It is a loan that has been
borrowed by the previous administration – the Obasanjo, the Jonathan, the
Yar’Adua of this world.
“[And] since the business of
government is a continuum, the President of the day has no choice but to
continue to pay back all these loans that have been borrowed by the previous
administrations.
“More than three-quarter of these
loans you’re seeing were borrowed from the previous administrations, and we are
paying back – we are doing what is supposed to be done, the way it is supposed
to be done.
“So, when my colleague said that
for every sixty-seven naira of any loan that was borrowed, we are using to pay,
he should know that more than sixty naira of it are loans borrowed by the
previous administration. And that is where we are.”
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