The Buhari-led administration intends to borrow $800 million from the World Bank as a palliative to lessen the impact of the projected elimination of subsidies by June 2023, but THE Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, or CISLAC, protested against this over the weekend.
This was stated in a statement that CISLAC Executive Director Auwal Rafsanjani signed.
Rafsanjani characterized Buhari’s action as peculiar given that he had just funded remedies to remove fuel subsidies.
“If the process of removing fuel subsidies has been suspended, as the Minister of Finance announced following the NEC meeting at the end of April, then the government should return the borrowed funds, because what are we taking the loan for?” the statement says in part.
“In 2022, Nigeria paid about N7 trillion in fuel subsidy and in 2023 from January to June when the country intends to stop paying the subsidy is N3.6 trillion so if we are paying such whopping amount of money when subsidy is removed, we should have enough savings instead of taking additional loans, we can use the subsidy funds for post fuel subsidy removal.
“As a matter of fact, we don’t need to borrow. What we need to do is to cut waste. Just recently, we all saw the aviation minister announce that he bought 10 fire fighting trucks for over 12 billion naira. Is this what we are borrowing to spend on?
“Also, we read that the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy announced the approval of 24.2 billion to provide internet facilities at airports and some institutions amongst other places. These are the things we are spending on a few weeks before the end of this administration and this is unacceptable.”
The head of CISLAC also denounced the government under Buhari’s leadership’s first few weeks of irresponsible expenditure that was not essential.
He argued that it is suspicious because the majority of public officials use this opportunity to redirect monies for their own interests rather than the national welfare.
“What is the need for acquiring fighter trucks towards the end of an administration, a position you have held for over eight years but you find no need to acquire the trucks until the end, this is a clear sign of contract scams that don’t follow due process and public interest. It is simply financial recklessness.
“And Nigeria as a nation that is so swamped up in debts we can’t afford that right now because where’s the public interest in that elephant project.
“Also the Minister of Communications has gone ahead to get an approval of FEC for N24.2bn for internet access at airports and universities but these are services that naturally should be done by service providers.
“Nigeria is already in another debt trap. Records from both national and international financial and debt institutions regarding Nigeria’s debt reveal a state in crisis.”
However, he urged the nation’s financial watchdogs to shine a spotlight on public spending that has not adhered to the procurement process.
