Senator Shehu Sani, ex-chairman of the committee on local and foreign debts in the 8th senate under Dr Saraki has opened up on why the National Assembly rejected Buhari’s $29.96bn loan request at the time. The ex-lawmaker who is also a human right activist in a statement on Friday, says the decision of the lawmakers to reject the $29.96 billion loan request from President Muhammadu Buhari was to save Nigeria from being ”recolonised by creditor banks”.
He warned that borrowing further will jeopardise Nigeria’s future.
The president first forwarded the request captured in the federal government’s 2016-2018 external borrowing plan to the upper legislative chamber in 2016.
After failing to secure their approval, he sent it to the 9th assembly on Thursday, asking the lawmakers to approve the loan which he said is “critical to the delivery of the government’s policies and programmes”.
But Sani said the country’s external debt would have hit $52 billion if the senate had approved the loan request.
“We turned down the FG loan request for $30 Billion to save Nigeria from sinking into the dark gully of a perpetual debt trap,” he said.
“We don’t want our country to be recolonized by creditor banks.”
Sani, who represented Kaduna central at the senate, said the country’s external debt stands at $22.08 billion as of June this year — from $10.32 billion in 2015.
“With the current escalation of borrowing, we will be walking into debt slavery and move from landlords to tenants in our country,” he said.