The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola yesterday alleged that a huge part of Nigeria’s total debt stock estimated at N33 trillion were incurred by past administrations dating back to the military era.
Adeola, said this yesterday, during consideration of the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
He said majority of the loans being repaid presently by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration were ones accumulated from the times of the military to those of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) administration under ex-presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, between 1999 and 2015.
Adeola said this when asked by the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, to make clarifications on concerns raised by lawmakers, particularly over Nigeria’s debt profile during deliberation on the report of the Joint Committees on Finance; Local and Foreign Debts; Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions; Petroleum Resources (Upstream); Downstream Petroleum Sector and Gas on the 2022-2024 Medium Term Framework.
Responding, Adeola said, “The borrowing you are saying is accumulated borrowing. It is not a borrowing of this administration alone, it is a borrowing that stems from the days of the military to the days when the Democratic dispensation started.
“It is an accumulated loan, it is not a loan that says that it is the current administration of President Buhari that has borrowed.
“It is a loan that has been borrowed by the previous administration – the Obasanjo, the Jonathan, the Yar’Adua of this world.
“And since the business of government is a continuum, the President of the day has no choice but to continue to pay back all these loans that have been borrowed by the previous administrations.
“More than three-quarter of these loans you’re seeing were borrowed from the previous administrations, and we are paying back – we are doing what is supposed to be done, the way it is supposed to be done.
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