ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria. The chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign and Domestic Debt, Senator Shehu Sani, has disclosed that the total foreign debt owed by all the states of the federation stood at $3.3 billion.
He said that most of the borrowed funds are for infrastructure or investment in the states, lamenting that what one could see is not commensurate with the loans.
Senator Sani in a statement which was made available to newsmen in Abuja on Saturday, explained that the “northern governors through their chairman, the Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima, reacted to my opposition to their move to secure loan from the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia.They insisted I am wrong and that they are right.”
Sani, who is representing Kaduna Central at the Senate, insisted that “Kashim Shettima as a seasoned banker and his colleagues should look inwards and think of better ways to liberate the masses of the north from pauperism and underdevelopment and not by lumping on them burden of unserviceable debts.”
According to him, if this generation of Nigerian leaders cannot leave behind for the future generation a developed and industrialised nation, they must not enslave them and paralyse their future in debt.
The lawmaker made it known that there is no tangible infrastructural development in the Northern geo-political zone of the country that is commensurate with the amount of loan collected by the state governments in the last two decades.
He made it known that most of the states are incapable of servicing their debt in the next 50 years, “taking into cognizance of the current state of our economy, we have been plunged into a debt trap of which our grand children will not even be able to pay.”
Sani further explained that “ there is no single export-based investment or industry in the North that is currently in operation towards generating and attracting one million dollars monthly of foreign exchange.”
He specifically charged the Northern states governor that dwindling oil revenue and handouts to states should not be the justification by them to source for foreign loan and pile up debt for this and future generations of northerners.
Sani insisted that “ most part of foreign and domestic loans collected were spent on personal luxuries or wasted in maintaining local political empire or financing white elephants or funding unrealistic political campaign promises.”
“f we keep on borrowing at this pace, without adequate plan and enough resources to service them,we will end up burying ourselves in debt.
However, he explained that despite the on-going hoopla of diversification “there is no seriousness by most states to improve on agriculture. Most states ministries of agriculture are simply redundant underfunded bureaucracies .Addiction and intoxication with federal allocation have turn states into outposts of handouts.”
Credit: Tribune (Nigeria)
