The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre has queried the federal government over the World Bank’s $800 million loan for fuel subsidy palliatives to Nigerians.
The Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Musa-Rafsanjani, in a statement during the weekend, expressed displeasure over the nonchalant attitude displayed by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, towards the country’s worrisome debt burden.
Rafsanjani stated that the $800 million loan from the World Bank should be suspended since Buhari’s administration will not remove the fuel subsidy.
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He added that getting another $800 million loan is worrisome as Nigeria’s revenue collection in 2022 stood at N10 trillion, with a debt of about N77 trillion.
“If the fuel subsidy removal process has been suspended as announced by the Minister of Finance after the NEC meeting at the end of April, then the government should return the borrowed money because what are we taking the loan for?” He queried.
“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 a whopping amount of money when the 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 firefighting trucks for over N12 billion. Is this what we are borrowing to spend on?
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“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”.
Rafsanjani also condemned the reckless spending of this present administration with just a few weeks to go, saying it’s totally unnecessary and it’s a clear sign of diversion of public funds for personal interest and not for the overall good of the country.
