ICSAN supports government borrowing to fund infrastructure 

Despite warnings about Nigeria’s borrowing spree, the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN) has said that the country could borrow more to fund infrastructural development.
 
However, it maintained that fresh loans must be utilised for infrastructure and technological advancement and not debt servicing or consumption.
 
President and Chairman of the Council, Bode Ayeku, who stated this over at the weekend ahead of the institute’s 2020 annual conference, said that the government must be prudent with resource management if the country must progress. 
 
He said: “The sources of revenue are not broad-based as it were. when there is a drop in revenue, the ideal thing is to be disciplined in spending; the nation’s cost of governance is abnormal. The government needs to let stakeholders know that it cannot continue to spend money at the current rate.
 
“You cannot spend so much serving the bloated structure and system, which we have. It won’t work because spending has no impact on the people. The structure of the institutions must align with the current reality. So, we must spend prudently if we must get out of the wood”
 
With this year’s theme centred on ‘Entrenching the Right Governance Framework for Economic Development and Sustainability’, Ayeku spoke on how the conference would address the cost of governance as well as other misdirected priorities.
 
He lamented the colossal loss of revenue by the government on delays in implementing digital operations across parastatals. He maintained that digitalisation is the minimum platform the government must put in place for it to operate seamlessly.
 
The ICSAN boss believed that firm corporate governance practice would help the country to navigate the challenges of Covid-19 and the destruction perpetrated during the #EndSARS protests.