The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has questioned President Muhammadu Buhari’s fresh external loan request of $5.5 billion pending before the National Assembly for approval.

In a statement on Wednesday, by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Prince Dayo Adyeye, the party accused the President of mortgaging the future of the unborn generation of Nigerians through “needless and mindless” borrowing.

Reference:

• The Debt Management Office (DMO), in a recent statement, put the Federal Government’s total borrowing with the past two years at N7.51 trillion.

The PDP warned that the fresh $5.5 billion loan request was capable of pushing the nation down the black hole of debt that could adversely affect the future of the country.

The statement reads, “As a party that governed this nation meritoriously for 16 years and handed over a buoyant economy to the APC in 2015, we are concerned that by the time Nigerians would have the opportunity to push out the APC government in 2019, the economy of the nation would have been damaged irreparably.

“We are dismayed at the rate at which the APC government is plunging the nation into debt through local and foreign borrowing without concomitant developmental projects in any sphere of the nation’s economy to justify the huge borrowing.

“The figure released recently by the Debt Management Office (DMO) stating that the nation under the administration of the APC government in the last two years of being in office, has borrowed N7.51 trillion, is mind-boggling.

“Mind-boggling because all round infrastructural decay has now reached alarming proportions. The roads have deteriorated, the state of the power supply has become worse, there has been no increase in wages to match skyrocketing inflation.

“As a result, workers in educational institutions and other government agencies have spent more time at home observing strike actions than they spend at work, insecurity has sky-rocketed beyond what anyone can imagine, while those in power continue to delude themselves that they are providing plausible leadership for the country.”

The party challenged President Buhari to explain to Nigerians what his government has done with the huge sums borrowed in the last two years in the name of financing infrastructural development in the country.

According to the PDP, the nation’s debt has risen by 61.96 percent since Buhari assumed the leadership of the country over two years ago.

The opposition party called on the National Assembly not to grant the $5.5 billion loan request, saying there was no tangible result to show for huge loans obtained in the last two years.

“As major stakeholders in the Nigerian project, we are worried that if the National Assembly does not stop this latest demand for foreign loan, the money when released, will go the way of other loans obtained in the last two years without any tangible result to show for it,” the statement added.