PDP Condemns Plans By Buhari To Borrow $5.5 Billion

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has expressed worries about plans by the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration to obtain another $5.5 billion foreign loan.
A statement released on Wednesday by Dayo Adeyeye, the party’s spokesman, claimed despite the buoyant economy handed over by the PDP led administration in 2015, the President Buhari led APC administration has resulted to needless borrowings which is putting the country’s future in danger.
The statement reads: “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.
“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.”
“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.
“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-rocketed beyond what anyone can imagine, while those in power continue to delude themselves that they are providing plausible leadership for the country.”
“The data shows that since President Buhari was sworn-in, the nation’s debt has risen by 61.96% in only two years,” it said.
“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.”
Recall that President Buhari on Tuesday wrote to the Senate, requesting its approval to obtain the $5.5 billion loan, part of which he said will be used to finance the 2017 budget.