A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, on Sunday appealed to President Bola Tinubu to rescue Nigerians from a debt trap in order to fulfill his Renewed Hope Agenda and allow citizens to breathe.
Okechukwu lamented that he cannot fathom how the Renewed Hope Agenda will bring the intended succor to Nigerians when the country is burdened with all manner of debts, both local and foreign, “prohibitive interest rates on treasury bills, dangerous dollar-denominated loans, and short-term Eurobonds, making the fiscal restructuring of debt service imperative.”
In a statement he signed, Okechukwu humbly appealed to the president, citing Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that “he who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing,” and called for a high-powered panel of inquiry to reexamine Nigeria’s debts to uncover genuine and less-than-transparent debt transactions.
He cautioned that the huge debt burden threatens Nigeria’s nascent democracy and drains resources meant for health, education, and poverty alleviation.
According to Okechukwu: “It is regrettable that the budget for Defence (N4.91tr), Infrastructure (N4.06tr), Education (N3.52tr), and Health (N2.48tr), totaling N14.97tr, is far less than the N15.8trillion budgeted for debt service.”
Okechukwu acknowledged the removal of fuel subsidies, giving kudos to President Tinubu, but lamented that the humongous debt service has now become the new anti-production elephant in the room.
He said: “Yes, the fuel subsidy is gone, albeit the subsidy regime had links to the planlessness and squandermania that governed the sordid debt exercise. Or do we forget outliers like when Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the current WTO President, instituted a panel that probed and found that the fuel subsidy was riddled with corruption, upon which the culprits resorted to kidnapping her mother?”
“Accordingly, Mr. President should dust off Okonjo-Iweala’s files and other bad loan files with the intent to recover monies and return Nigeria to a productive economy.”
Okechukwu recalled with nostalgia that Nigeria’s first loan from the Paris Club in 1964 was $13.1 million for the construction of the Niger Dam. He also mentioned Nigeria’s debt relief deal under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration in 2005, where $35.994 billion in debt was canceled.
He noted, paradoxically, that today, Nigeria’s debt burden stands at N121.67 trillion, equivalent to $91.46 billion USD.
“The only way to break the fetters of the debt burden, as we did in 2005, is through fiscal restructuring. In other words, a high-powered multilateral panel of inquiry must ascertain our actual debt and seek debt cancellation,” he said.
On what must be done, the former Director General of Voice of Nigeria urged President Tinubu to make bold decisions.
Okechukwu added: “I agree totally with President Tinubu that we must make bold decisions, even though they may be painful. Accordingly, the necessary bold decisions at this critical juncture are not excessive taxation or high tariffs, but a multilateral, high-powered panel of inquiry comprising eminent local and international statesmen to reexamine our domestic and foreign debts as the only answer to save Nigerians from the debt trap.
“And secondly, plug corruption and restrict borrowing to only critical infrastructure through humanitarian groups like SUKUK and friends of Nigeria.”