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‘More loans sinking Nigeria, N’Assembly should urgently fix economy’

By Charles Ogugbuaja, Owerri
26 April 2021   |   4:06 am
Worried about the recent loan approval of $1.5 billion for the Federal Government, the Foundation for Environmental Rights Advocacy and Development (FENRAD) has warned that Nigeria “is gradually sinking.”

Worried about the recent loan approval of $1.5 billion for the Federal Government, the Foundation for Environmental Rights Advocacy and Development (FENRAD) has warned that Nigeria “is gradually sinking.”

In a statement, yesterday, by its Executive Director, Nelson Nnanna Nwafor, the group remarked: “FENRAD is worried that the Federal Government, in spite of Nigeria’s current harsh economic realities, is set to get a loan of $1.5 billion as recently approved by the National Assembly through the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts. This, we cry out, should not be happening now.

We call for financial discipline and judicious use of available but thinning resources than endangering the future of the nation’s unborn through unsustainable loans.”

Advising the federal lawmakers to urgently embark on fixing the economy rather than growing national debts, FENRAD added: “Current widespread hardship plunges Nigeria deeper into hyperinflation as purchasing power among the rural and urban poor keeps declining, evidently seen in prices of food stuff with salaries owed workers by state governments. The global pandemic, indeed, had taken a heavy toll on oil – which is the principal foreign exchange source for Nigeria – and the danger of not saving in the rainy days Nigeria faces today.”

The group said it considered the paper presented by a financial guru in a public forum before it took the stance, hinting: “FENRAD, after studying the paper presented by Eze Onyekpere, entitled ‘The Rising Public Debt in Nigeria and the Challenges for National Development’ presented during a one-day national dialogue by Action Aid Nigeria, cautioned against national economic eclipse. The paper had raised concern that over 80 per cent of revenues in the federation goes to debt servicing.

This, the paper detailed with hard facts and statistics. The dangers ahead if Nigeria do not begin to build buffer around the already fragile and contracted economy to further enhance macroeconomic stability cannot be overemphasized.”

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