Grandiose Parlor

Does Nigeria need to take on more loans?

One of the achievements of the past administration was the pay-off of foreign debts totaling several billions dollars. Now the new word in Abuja now is “Borrow”; “Lets Borrow More”; “We Need more loans”.

Statement from the ‘new’ finance minister, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman:

“They are willing to give us more, we have the capacity to take more, we need more, so what are the problems? We have to identify them because $3 billion since 1999, if I tell you our needs, just the Federal Government alone. We are talking of huge infrastructural projects: the power plants, we are looking for billions of dollars to get power going. Imagine what will happen to this economy if we have sufficient power. Just imagine if you close your eyes and you cannot remember when last light went off unexpectedly. Now we need billions of dollars to do the railways, we need billions of dollars to do the roads, we need billions in so many areas to provide for food security and these are funds that are available and cheaper.”

He mentioned road and power supply…didn’t the past administration spend several billion dollars on power generation and road rehabilitation?

No doubt, infrastructure is bad in Nigeria…, the picture shows a segment of the Port Harcourt - Enugu expressway (freeway)…does it even look like a dual carriage road anymore?

If the excuse for the rotten infrastructure is funds, then the government need to consider downsizing first before taking on more loans that some idiots will steal again. The events in the national assembly and presidency since the 1999 at the beginning of the fourth republic and recently have shown that there is just too much money being used to service federal legislators and presidential staffers.