By Joy Baba Yesufu
Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) has decried Nigeria’s rising debt profile and the continuous borrowing to fund budget, noting that 2024 budget is more of deficit financing.
Mr. Paul Odokara, a senior program officer with ANEEJ stated this during an enquiry visit to the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu in his office in Abuja.
Odokara further asked the minister if the Nigeria current debt profile is still sustainable.
“The constitution said that if we are borrowing, it should be for capital and human development and not to buy SUVs for members of National Assembly.”
According to him, “the other issue is the budget issue and continuous borrowing by Nigeria to fund budget. This year’s budget is more of deficit financing and our debts keep rising. We want to find out from the ministry whether our debt is still sustainable, do we continue with this route of borrowing and if we are borrowing, we are advocating like the constitution said, if we are borrowing, it should be for capital and human development and not to buy SUVs for members of National Assembly”.
The ANEEJ representative further said that the organization wants to know what happened to the 3.35 billion US dollars’ worth of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocated to Nigeria by the International Monetary Funds (IMF) in 2021.
“We want to know if the SDR has been utilized or whether it has been converted to money and if it has been utilized, what was it used for. Stakeholders did not give the needed attention we wanted from the research we did to know what has happened to that fund, so our visit here is to find out whether this ministry is aware of the 3.35 billion US dollars’ worth of SDR allocated to Nigeria in 2021 by IMF.
“SDR should be used to fund social services like education, health services, water and sanitation. If the SDR was properly channeled into such important sectors, this will enable us call on the IMF again to increase our quota on SDR so we can use it to finance real time development” he added.
In his response, Senator Bagudu said the country is borrowing because “we are a poor nation noting that the resources we need to fund our development are simply not there.
“We are dealing with under investment and development assistance cannot fund it. We need roads, we need railways, we need better schools, we need irrigation infrastructures, we also need to modernize our live stocks sectors”, he added.
