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Foundation member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has sent a Save our Soul (SOS) message to President Bola Tinubu to rescue the country from debt trap in fulfillment of his Renewed Hope Agenda and allowing the citizenry to breathe.
Okechukwu, in a statement from Abuja on Sunday, argued that he cannot factor how the Renewed Hope Agenda will bring the intended succour he promised Nigerians with all manner of debts both local and foreign, prohibitive interest rate of treasury bills.
He hinged his humble appeal to Mr President, on Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that he who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.
The former Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), underscored the imperative of setting up a high powered panel of inquiry to re-examine the debts to unravel genuine and less than transparent debt transactions.
He cautioned that huge debt burden is a threat to Nigeria’s nascent democracy, stressing that it will drain resources meant for health, education and poverty alleviation.
Okechukwu regrets that the budget for Defence (N4.91tr); Infrastructure (N4.06tr); Education (N3.52tr) and Health (N2.48tr) altogether totalling N14.97 trillion, is far less than N15.8 trillion budgeted for debt service.
While acknowledging that there is no more fuel subsidy, kudos to him; he lamented that humongous debt service has unfortunately become the new elephant anti-production in the room.
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“Yes, fuel subsidy is gone, albeit fuel subsidy regime which had links with the planlessness and squandermania that governed the sordid debt exercise. Or do we forget outliers like when Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO President instituted a panel which probed and found out that the fuel subsidy was riddled with corruption, upon which the culprits resorted to kidnap of her mother?
“Accordingly Mr President should dust up Iweala’s file and other bad loan files with the intendment to recover monies and return Nigeria to productive economy.” Okechukwu retorted.
He said that it is with nostalgia to recall that the first loan Nigeria borrowed from Paris Club was $13.1 million in 1964 for the construction of Niger Dam and Nigeria’s debt relief deal with the same Paris Club of creditors under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration in 2005.
He narrated that the cancelled debt in December 2004 was $35.994 billion, and paradoxically, our debt burden today is N121.67 trillion equivalent of $91.46 billion USD, explaining that; “the only break fetters of debt burden like in 2005 is fiscal restructuring, in other words high power multilateral panel of inquiry to ascertain our actual debt and look for debt cancellation.”
Suggesting the way forward, Okechukwu noted; “I agreed totally with President Tinubu that we must make bold decisions, even though it may be painful. Accordingly, the necessary bold decisions at this critical junction is not excessive taxation or high tariffs but multilateral high powered panel of inquiry of eminent local and international statesmen to re-examine our domestic and foreign debts as the only answer to SOS (Save Our Soul) Nigerians from debt trap.
“Secondly, plug corruption and restrict borrowing to only critical infrastructure via humanitarian groups like SUKUK and friends of Nigeria,” he advised.
