Falana to FG: $30bn loan will jeopardise destiny of future generations
Femi Falana, human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has called on the federal government to shelve its plan to borrow $29.960 billion to execute key projects across the country.
He said the government would be putting the collective destiny of the younger generation in jeopardy should be loan be secured.
President Muhammadu Buhari recently sought the approval of the National Assembly to borrow the said loan from the World Bank.
Falana, while speaking at the 2016 annual general conference of Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) in Lagos on Saturday, urged the federal government to source for funds locally.
The lawyer, who’s a former president of CDHR, said the government should use recovered loot and go after chronic debtors to fund its projects.
He said: “We hear that the federal government wants to borrow $29 billion to fund the economy, my advice is we do not need to do this at such a period in our economy.
“What about the millions of the recovered loots from those who stole our money, our money that are in the hands of those who decided to steal from the treasury?
“I have a report from Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative, NEITI which states that the oil companies and NNPC are owing the federal government a joint $20.2b.
“All these should be recovered and used for these projects instead of putting the destiny of the younger generation and those to come in jeopardy as a result of the huge national debt it will bring.”
Pls help warn the mr. President to decist from borrowing what can land the nation in slavery the third time. I even thought APC is boyant enough to cater for the needs of the populace when they were carrying aggressive and deceitful campaign last year.. God save Nigeria
Your comment..can u describe the level of corruption by the last administration of which u are part of? if you people have left our over $76.b in the reserved did you think we will be looking for, 29.billion dollars?.
Nigerians will be wise enough by 2019, to seek for fresh young vibrant leader to lead us out of this mess that has been with us since Independence. We should disengage from recycle leaders that has done more damage to us. To me ,Buhari is structurally deficient to fix Nigeria’s problems. Intellectually, I do not think he has what it takes to lead us right. Though he meant well for Nigeria, but he’s deficient.