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let’s start by taking a peek into the dashboard of the accumulation of foreign debts by the All Progressives Congress [APC] political party, and the two regimes that it had produced thus far – that of Maj.Gen. [rtd] Muhammadu Buhari [2015-2023], and Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu [since 2023].
The APC succeeded the People’s Democratic Party [PDP] which ruled Nigeria for 16 years from 1999-2015. That party which boasted that it would rule this country consecutively for 60 years produced the presidencies of Olusegun Obasanjo [1999-2007]; the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua [2007-2010]; and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan [2010-2015]. At that time Nigerians rued the rulership of the PDP and deprecated the insensitivity of its leaders.
But on hindsight, it would appear now that the majority of Nigerians would rather prefer the haughtiness of the PDP leaders against that of the contemptuous APC and its leadership. This could explain why some citizens swiftly and loudly told Tinubu that they would prefer a ‘’return to Egypt’’ [meaning returning to the administrations of PDP] than remaining under the regime of the APC that is using Nigerians as guinea pigs in Tinubu’s economic voodoo that would end in disaster as did its precursor, the Structural Adjustment Programme [SAP] of military president, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
Almost all the elements in Babangida’s SAP 1.0 introduced in 1985, and which failed spectacularly, are in Tinubu’s SAP 2.0 which also will ultimately fail unless there’s a course-correct. The two misguided endeavours on SAP are erected on subsidy removals, massive and mindless devaluation of the Naira [Nigeria’s national currency], and the unleashing of the so-called unfettered market forces to determine what happens in all areas of our national life. These prescriptions are part of the standard one-size-fits-all economic recovery templates of the twin Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank [WB], and the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. The two agencies appear willing and ready to lend money, and more money, to this Nigerian administration, though they occasionally warn this country of the ever present danger of its being trapped in debt peonage.
When Tinubu was declared the winner of the 2023 presidential election, and on his assumption of office in May of that year, he said that he removed the alleged subsidy in petrol so that the country’s proclivity to incur both domestic and foreign debts would be curbed. Tragically, borrowings especially from offshore lenders, have escalated under this regime. The manner this administration borrows gives the impression that it’s in a mad rush to get all it can before loans go out of fashion. This president is not just borrowing, he’s also devising other means to mortgage the country’s critical and valuable assets in exchange for immediate cash. One of these devises was the forward sales of barrels of crude oil at outrageously discounted rates in return for immediate cash.
Meanwhile, this is the current dashboard of the debts incurred by the APC in the last eleven years. Buhari ruled for eight years, though his terms were marked more by ‘’non-governance’’. He borrowed N83 trillion. He was also very sick and at a time he spent 103 consecutive days on a hospital bed abroad. Under him petrol sold for less than N250/litre. Petroleum products were supposedly subsidised then. Tinubu came in. He removed petrol subsidy minutes after he acceded to the presidency. He told Nigerans that he did what he did to free up money for investments in critical infrastructure, and to save the country from incurring foreign debts.
Almost four years on, Nigeria’s broken infrastructure had remained essentially in their dilapidated state. Indeed, they have deteriorated and gotten worse, partly due to misplaced priorities of the regime. Instead of fixing existing highways nationwide which have become death traps, Tinubu elected to use his Minister of Works, a self-styled ‘professor of practice’, Engr. David Nweze Umahi, to award a no-bid and non-transparent $11 [?] billion Lagos – Calabar coastal highway to his [president’s] self-confessed long time business partner, Gilbert Chagouri and their construction company, Hitech.
In reality, this dubious highway has no determinate cost because it has the characterirstics of an amoeba which has no definite shape. It was first touted as a 12 – lane super highway with rail tracks separating the six lanes on each side of the 750-kilometre road. Then it was downgraded to six lanes with three on each side, and the rail tracks suspended. From the start we knew that the road was not preceded by any environmental and social impact assessment report. Now we have been officially told that indeed there was no masterplan for the project which may explain why the road would not hug parts of the coastal communities of Ondo state. The about to be deprived communities in the Ilaje area of Ondo are at daggers-drawn with Tinubu and his co-conspirator, Umahi.
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Meanwhile, Tinubu and Umahi, in conjunction with the Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, are presently in court for an order of a judge to keep the contract documents pertaining to the Lagos – Calabar road, a state secret. Some concerned citizens had applied for the release of the contract papers using the Freedom of Information Act. The government refused. The group was adamant. It went to court for enforcement. Then the regime hired six senior lawyers [SANs] and a dozen other attorneys to stall and stop the documents from getting into the hands of Nigerians who are supposed to be paying for the project. So, Nigerians are being compelled to pay for a contract which terms they do not know.
Meanwhile, in less than four years, and in spite of the insensitive removal of petrol subsidy ostensibly to free resources, Tinubu has succeeded in driving Nigeria’s debt exposure from Buhari’s N83 trillion over eight years, to N153 trillion in three years, even without petrol subsidy which was blamed for draining the country’s coffers. Last week, the president wrote to the lapdog senate for approval to borrow over $20 billion. Regime officials were, however, quick to rationalise that the request was not for fresh loans. They said the request was a cover for a borrowing framework over a specified timeframe.
It’s doubtful that Nigerians are inherently averse to borrowing, but that the regime must, as we are wont to say in local parlance ‘’show workings’’ for the debts it is amassing for future generations to pay. Some of these facilities would be due for repayment in 20, 30, or even 40 years. And more. Nigerians are suspicious that borrowed monies were splashed in acquiring a presidential jet and armour-plated bomb-resistant stately limousine; a yacht that has vanished from the country’s waters; a fleet of expensive and imported upscale SUVs for lawmakers, ministers, sundry directors, the wife of the president who occupies a position in government that’s not known to any laws of the country.
Recently, Nigerians were assailed with the video of brand new sport utility vehicles acquired and gifted to some youth leaders of the APC to aide their campaign for the re-election of Tinubu. A youth leader of the party tweeted, and soon after deleted the information. Make what you want with his deleting the message posted on X [formerly Tweeter]. The market value of the sleek vehicles was put at N1.5 billion. How would it be explained that a country that lives on borrowing would be gifting so-called youth leaders of the ruling party vehicles that cost a staggering N150 million each. If they have any conscience even those who lend to Nigeria would be scandalised at the penchant of our rulers for unseriousness and profligacy.
Some months earlier, the wife of the president, Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu, had acquired SUVs for some women leaders of the APC. She did not stop there. She publicly, on national television, directed APC state governors, 31 of them, to buy and gift women leaders in their respective states high-end vehicles. She added that the vehicles to be procured should be in the personal names of the beneficiaries. Mrs. Tinubu issued a Decree that tax payers money be converted to personal wealth and asset. It’s in-your-face. It’s brazen.
Tinubu launched the start of his campaign for re-election in Kaduna on October 25. He said nothing that remotely resembled the truth to his audience that day. He spewed lies including claiming that his political rivals were responsible for the hunger and poverty ravaging the land. What the president did was not strange because lying is in the DNA of the APC. They lied themselves into power in 2015. The party campaigned in 2014/2015 and 2019 with a manifesto of lies. The same was carried over in 2023. The promises of the APC are not worth the papers they were written on. When APC people are not lying, they are attempting to gaslight the unwary. Often they succeed to the extent of the level they have impoverished citizens and left them barely educated.
The too frail to campaign and too weak to govern President Tinubu has settled for a dozen states where he would put up appearance in the name of campaigning. It’s expected that he would find time to name the projects that have been built with the sums that he had borrowed so far, and how the new borrowing plans meet the country’s priorities for the provision of infrastructural facilities. He should tell his audience how the loans have helped his regime to degrade insurgency and terrorism. How the loans have aided him to deliver on his promise four years ago that he would ensure stable public electricity to consumers, and why we should ignore his exhortation that we should not vote for his re-election if he failed to meet that vow. Tinubu would not lack talking points had he elected to campaign throughout the country. Well, he didn’t because he certainly couldn’t. If he wanted to campaign widely, the one week or so he would be spending in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, for prayers would have been enough to add at least five more states to his campaign itinerary. After all, the US president Donald Trump has done more than 24 campaign rallies in about two weeks in support of his party’s candidates in today’s mid-term elections. And to think that Trump is not even on the ballot.
