$29.9bn loan: Don’t mortgage our youths future, Falana tells Buhari

By Odunewu Segun

Human right activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana has advised the Federal Government to drop its plan to borrow $29.960 billion to execute key projects across the country.

Speaking at the 2016 annual general conference of Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) in Lagos, Falana said government would be putting the collective destiny of the younger generation in jeopardy should it go ahead with the plan.

He urged the federal government to source for funds locally. The lawyer, who is 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 dollars 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?

It will be recalled that President Muhammadu Bu­hari had sent a request to the House of Representatives and Senate to borrow the sum of $29.960 billion to provide infra­structure and execute its safety net programmes from 2016 to 2018.

The money, the President said, would be used to finance pro­jects with emphasis on infrastruc­ture, agriculture, health, educa­tion, water supply, growth and employment generation, pover­ty reduction through social safe­ty net programmes and govern­ance and financial management reforms among others.

He said the devastated North East Zone will get the sum of $575 million from the loan.

Bu­hari said that proposed projects and programmes will take the sum of 11.274 billion dollars, special nation­al infrastructure projects ($10.686 billion), Euro bonds ($4.5 billion) and Federal Government budget support ($3.5 billion).